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^^ PTFE still isn't really suitable for that. You'd use threadlok or paste usually. People seem to love PTFE, but it usually causes more harm than good. PTFE tape on compression fittings is a classic :crazy:

Is increased length a good indicator of how good lighting is? I can get plants to grow really quick in low light because they trying to get more light. Whereas I've found in a very highly lit aquarium, growth becomes very dense but the change in height of the plant is less. Perhaps the Rotala...

I suspect the lumen maintenance varies substantially between LEDs and manufacturers too. Different phosphors, temperature conditions and intensity of light probably all have significant effects. In one of the projects at work we are currently using some leading edge high power white LEDs in a...

Don't forget that a WHITE high flux LED will typically drop to 80% over 20000 hours. Coloured LEDs (non phosphor coating) have a better lumen maintenance. I have a couple of white Lumileds 1W LEDs in my house that turn on for 10 hours a day have been installed for about five years now, and...

Looks like the Philips de Luxe Pro's are gone too.

Re: DIY 120cm LED + Dimmable T5 120cm Luminaire Just realised I never got round to updating this thread. The light has been running since November with no issues and in my opinion looks really good. My partner was somewhat sceptical about mounting from the ceiling, but the ceiling has only two...

I just use an Ehiem filter inlet tube and strainer.

Saw this too, but it doesn't appear to do anything to stop nitrate building up. I know people that have been using ozone generators for years on their aquariums though, so this is hardly new.

I've had a look, but it must be on my work pc, so it'll have to wait till after xmas now. The spectrum kind of has the same features as the one above, but the peak at 465nm (which was about 15nm wide) was about twice the peak in the red area.

The speed controller in the link and rheostats would only work with universal motors. The Koralia probably wouldn't slow down until the magnetic field drops enough to start causing the shaft to start slipping. To control the speed you'd need a VFD. Easiest method to slow down the flow would be...

And the blue, otherwise they'd be red not pink. I have a plot somewhere I'll dig out that I took with a spectrometer on a grolux lamp and there are peaks at about 420nm and 465nm.

No, because each time you only change 10%, you're essentially taking some of your 'fresh' water back out. The first day, you take out 10% tank water. The second day you are taking 9% tank water out and 1% of the water you changed the time before.

I know this is an old thread, but just to avoid confusion for anyone reading this, changing 10% daily for 7 days is not the same as a single 70% water change due to the dilution. 7 10% water changes is the same as a single 52% change

Yes, that light is fine. It has a standard RX7S-24 lampholder, so the same lamps will fit.

I would avoid that, and look for something where the light is more directional like this: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1-x-E27-ES-High-P ... 2a09b6f6fe

Wow that guy did loads of tubes and combinations! Poor fish! lol

Re: DIY 120cm LED + Dimmable T5 120cm Luminaire Yeah I took a look at that thread, and somewhat based my selection from what I saw there. :)

The pre-filter is great, and makes it easy to give it a rinse without having to disturb any of the filter media. I must admit, I'm very lazy with my filter maintenance and leave it ages between cleans but the water quality stays perfect.

Re: DIY 120cm LED + Dimmable T5 120cm Luminaire Thanks for the comment. There will be more to come... I've just placed an order at lampspecs for: 1x Philips 54W Daylight 865 1x Osram 54W Skywhite 880 1x Philips 54W 965 De Luxe Pro 1x Sylvania 54W 840 Cool White 1x Sylvania Grolux 54W Will be...

Re: DIY 120cm LED + Dimmable T5 120cm Luminaire User Interface: To set the timers and control the light, I decided to use the USB link to allow the microcontroller to be accessed from a terminal program on a PC. The LCD on the front of the light unit is a bit small to be able to easily view...

Re: DIY 120cm LED + Dimmable T5 120cm Luminaire The next thing to do was to wire up the rest of the light. A simple job which ended up taking all day! Here is another photo of the PCB in-situ after reassembling the entire light fitting with the blue LEDs on: And again but with the T5's...

Re: DIY 120cm LED + Dimmable T5 120cm Luminaire After working out how much space I would have to play with, I set about laying out the PCBs for the LED drivers and the microcontroller board. The microcontroller board interfaces with the LED drivers to change the intensity of the LEDs and also...

Ages ago back in the 'DIY LED Lighting' thread I mentioned that I was going to build an LED strip to fit in my aquarium: http://www.ukaps.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=3687&start=40#p41043 Originally, I was going to mount some LEDs onto a strip of aluminium and slide it into some acrylic tube...

I've never had a problem with my 2078e. It is very quiet, and the design is great - but that should be the same for any of the 3 series filters. I don't use half of the functions on the filter, but the flow adjustment is great for when I'm doing water changes.

Is anyone still interested in going ahead with buying a PAR meter? I'd be really interested to know the light levels of my new setup. The LEDs look dimmer than I'd hoped for despite them being blindingly bright. They still are LCD TVs, just backlit by LEDs instead of CCFLs.

I agree. The authors seem to be missing that point, and on other plants would most likely lead to spindly growth rather than bushy growth.

What model is your aquarium. There are a couple of odd sizes (e.g. the 1047mm 54W tubes) that only Jewel and a few other manufacturers make (dennerle and arcadia I think?).

Something like the 954 daylight lamp from the link below should look nicer than a 3500k lamp http://www.lampspecs.co.uk/Light-Bulbs-Tubes/24-Watt_2 ...but it may have no improvement whatsoever on plant growth.

Got my 2kg refilled here last Saturday for £10. Superb service, was in and back out within 5 minutes :)

Looks good. My only comment is that the heatsinks look a little on the small side. What kind of temperature are they getting to? Unfortunately I have little to show at the moment as I'm working on the PCB design first.

I'll make sure I take plenty of photos :D

Tomorrow afternoon I'm going to start work on my system. My HC 'cuba' seems to be suffering a little in my Rio 240 lit by two 54W T5's. I tested an additional 54W T5 on the aquarium tonight and immediately all the lower level plants started pearling, but it is impractical to add the 54W tube as...

It would be normal to derate relay contacts by at least half for inductive loads, but as the relay is rated for 25A there shouldn't be any worries about using all but the largest fans. Refrigeration units are probably worse for start up current anyway. Using a diode won't work for AC loads as...

You'll be fine with an 18W magnetic ballast, the lamp will just fail slightly prematurely, but if you go with an 18W electronic ballast you may find it shutting down then restarting a few minutes after. It'll vary from brand to brand.

I have to say I'm extremely impressed with my 2078e. It's virtually silent, the primer works fine (1 pump got it going and the filter purged the air automatically which was great). I'm also getting excellent flow rates - I can run it all the way up to top speed without problems. It's rated at...

The 2078e is approximately 290mm wide, 300mm deep and 560mm tall including hoses.

The 2078e is a great filter, and I cannot see the problem with using it on your 125l aquarium. You can always slow the flow rate down if you require.

Depending on your diffuser/reactor it's probably on the low side. For 500l I'd expect 2bps or more, but of course fine tune slowly using your drop checker.

They will work, the only issue is they usually come with colour 827 tubes as standard and are not sufficiently IP rated. If you can put them in an enclosure which will protect them from condensation and change the tubes for different ones then you're all set. My only doubt would be the lifetime...

I like the Eheim PowerLine internal filters. I've not used the aquaball filters but they look equally well built.

It's a standard PL tube. You'll have absolutely no trouble at all finding replacements.

Tbh, I think you'll get a good lifetime from the compact 2000 anyway. Get whichever suits. As a sidenote, the Eheim 1250 has standard threads on the inlet/outlet so you can use whatever sized barb you want for different hose sizes.

I think the extra cost of the 1250 will be down to reliability as they are fairly similar on the spec sheet. I've never heard of one fail or need replacement parts. They're damn heavy compared to the compact so there must be something different in it!

The Eheim 1250 is an excellent pump. I've had one watercooling my PC for about 4 years now without problems.

Yep, all sounds good Gordon. James, you can use a PC power supply, but the ATX spec requires both the 5V and 12V lines to be loaded to properly regulate the outputs (and sometimes even to turn on). I think the 5V line requires somewhere near an amp load, and the 12V line about half an amp...

The limit on how many LEDs you can have is based on both the maximum current and maximum voltage from your AC adapter. SuperColey is using so many power supplies because they can only supply about 1A at 12V which is 12W. If your power supply can supply more current, you can have more drivers in...

16/0.2mm equipment wire would be ideal. I'd avoid bell wire as it's a little thin and will not help with the inductance to the LEDs. There's a Maplin in Lincoln - http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=6197

You'll be right on the limit of not being able to get full brightness from the LEDs. It would be a bit more comfortable to have more headroom by using a 15V or 18V PSU, but if you already have some power supplies going for free, you can always see how well it works with those first. You won't...

Don't worry - mine will be one plug only :)

James is right - If you can, look at getting the largest fan you can. Perhaps mount it to the top of the hood rather than the side as the big fans are a lot quieter and if you throttle down the voltage they can be silent.

Ed: The reason they burnt out is that LEDs do not work like incandescent lamps. LEDs do not conduct until they reach a threshold voltage. There may then be only a 0.5V range between 0 and 100% brightness, and any higher will cause the LED to overheat. If you control the current into an LED, you...

It's difficult to say. You should be looking at similar light outputs to T5, perhaps even better. Got a link to the auction for the LEDs?

You should get quite a good spread of light with the LEDs spaced evenly across the hood with that size tank and that number of LEDs. If you ever needed higher intensity, it would not be difficult to add further LEDs at the diagonals between the existing LEDs.

Yeah strings of 3 LEDs from 12V supplies would work fine, and those heatsinks look ideal. It may be worth you getting some optics/collimators for your LEDs depending on your aquarium size and the distance between the LEDs and the water source, but these can be added later of course. What size...

The drawing is now correct, but you won't be able to drive 4 in series from a 12V supply. In reality you will need at least at 16V supply for four white LEDs in series and the driver. 24V would be recommended though and 4 in series will still be fine because the driver controls the current...

That power supply is just a tad under 40W, so you could drive 13 LEDs from it. As I said before, there is a line in the Luxeon III datasheet that says "3.Electrical insulation between neighboring Stars is required —aluminum board is not electrically neutral.". You will need an insulating...

And then everybody fried their LEDs :lol: I'll start a new thread soon, although progress might be slow as I'm feeling a bit lazy at the moment :D

LEDs are diodes which have an IV characteristic like this: So once the diode is forward biased and conducting, a very small increase in voltage causes a massive increase in current. Therefore you cannot accurately drive an LED from a constant voltage source as the forward voltage varies from...

Silicon lube is also suitable.

He's completely fudging it. These LEDs should be driven with constant current not direct off a 24V power supply with no current limiting :shock: It looks like he's using a 10A 24V SMPSU , and you could indeed use a 12V power supply, but yours can only supply 300mA - it needs to be much more...

The little power supply you have is 3.6W at 12V, so you won't be able to power many high powered LEDs.

Yep, I'm almost ready to start. There's a few I may not use there, such as the superflux LEDs (at the top in the tube) and the Luxeon K2's (at the bottom). There's 5 royal blue LEDs for moonlighting, and 2 5W amber LEDs for sunrise. I also started prototyping a driver (proto board on the...

I'll probably use some Zetex ZXLD1350 and ZXLD1360's which I have somewhere (I've not unpacked all my electronics stuff despite moving house 9 months ago!), but I also have some PIC10F204s which I've been using as (cheaper!) switching regulators. The plan will probably be to have a bunch of...

I've had trouble growing non-aquatic seedlings (chili plants) with just the red and blue spectrum from red and blue high power LEDs. The leaves also ended up a bit pale. I had much better results from white LEDs, but CFLs and sodium lamps still gave the best growth. The plants must have...

Thanks for the pictures scottturnbull. You don't want to be driving multi-watt LEDs with a resistor or you'll be dramatically reducing their efficiency!!

Out of interest, are you using LEDs as a full replacement or as an addition and do you have any pictures of your set up?

Conversely, warm white LEDs are considerably less efficient than cool white LEDs - sometimes up to 40% less. They still use the same die in the LED, but the phosphors are different causing the inefficiency. (white LEDs are usually blue LEDs with a phosphor over the top).

Whilst of course what you wrote is correct, comparing light sources using lumens is going to give a fairly close idea of the light output if we are comparing white light sources especially when you combine this with the spectrometer graphs, and is going to be the only way you can compare them...

They're a bugger to DIY with though, unless you can get hold of the versions already mounted on an aluminium star.

We have some 150W LEDs at work, which are serious beasts and need peltier cooling, but they do lose their efficiency compared to 1/3/5W LEDs. The 20W LEDs are a bit more difficult to work with than 4 x 5W LEDs for example as the heat is concentrated in a very small area. If you could sort out...

Their output equivalence will be based on a poor or no reflector on the T5. Whether they have better depth penetration will depend on the lenses on the LEDs. So if you are looking for the highest depth penetration you'd want a highly collimated beam from the LED, but coverage would be very...

The latest generation of cool white LEDs that you will see in LED strips like this are approximately equal to T5 lamps at around 60 to 100 lumens per watt, so metal halides are in general still the most efficiency white light source. However, while the efficiency is similar for T5 and LEDs, if...

The second ones won't be 45W equivalent :lol: Look a couple of lines down in the spec and it draws 3.6W including the driver. The three 1W leds are a better option in my opinion.

Don't waste your money on the Maplin LED strip. You'll never get a 14cd from those LEDs, and if you do, it'll be a very narrow beam angle. You cannot compare these LED strips from the specs they have given to another light source (like your 100W lamp for example) as a 1 candela = 1...

It looks like there is quite a large amount of air in your drop checker, so this is probably what is causing the longer reaction time.

There should be no problem filling from the tap if you have a combi boiler.

Thanks very much for this info! I'm within walking distance of this place and I didn't even know!