What's the benefits of LED's?

I'm just finishing a 90 3W LED cree fixture for a friends 120g tank and I run a 40 LED bridgelux fixture over my 40g breeder. There is a difference, but how much it matters is all relative to the application. Cree run at a higher amp(700-1500 mamp depending on color), giving them the ability to push out more light. Differences in the amps make wiring different colors with a cree a little trickier though. Bridgelux all run at 700 mamp, thus they are easy as hell to wire, but cannot emit as much light as cree. So for small tanks brigdelux works fine because its lesser strength can still reach the tank bottom, based on my par readings up to 20" deep with bridgelux. Cree can kick ass and power most tanks with enough led's, but may fry shallow tanks without turning down the mamp, at which point its running the same as bridgelux. My 40g breeder runs soft, LPS, and SPS and the blue run at 75% dimmed 12hrs and whites run at 50% dimmed 5hrs a day because the bridgelux were cooking my soft coral and acros at full power.

There is also a small difference in spectrum and again cree LED's have a slightly better photosynthetic spectrum in regards to each color. It doesn't seem to make a big difference in par readings, but it is a little different. I will have the cree fixture fully running in a week or two depending on work, after that I can take good par and spectrograph readings. Hopefully this helps you decide what is best for your purposes.

 

I'll refer you to my table I made comparing the LEDs at Aquastyle vs Cree and Luxeon LEDs sold by RapidLED, LEDGroupBuy, and StevesLEDs.
Table

 

This was very helpful. Could you post a pict of your 40 breeder. Also, which kit, drivers, heat sink, etc did you get?

 

I really want to do both my tanks, but I'm not going to spend $500 or more.

So here is what I've come up with so far. Aquastyles 36 led kit with 2 of the meanwell ELN 60-48d drivers. Shipped it will be $147

Then I'm thinking 2 of the 6x20 heat sinks with splash guards fro rapid LED for $73 shipped.

I want to put the 2 heatsinks together and create a 12x20 heat sink.

Any thoughts?

 

If you looked at my chart I posted above, you'd see that the price to performance ratio of the LEDs sold at Aquastyle is lower than that of the Cree and Luxeon. You could save power for little additional costs by using 18 XT-E LEDs or XT-E and Rebel ES Royal Blues. The royal blue LEDs are over 100% better than the Bridgelux, and the whites are about 60% better. Though they're a bit less, you can also run them at a bit higher current and get to the equivalent of 2 Bridgelux. You just need to a bit of shopping around to get the same cost, but it's doable.

I could get it to about 160 USD using Luxeon for royal blue and XT-E for white with everything needed for a dimmable LED setup. In total, it's about $20 more, and the power difference isn't much, a few dollars a year, but it's an option that you may prefer. Sites to look at are StevesLEDs for royal blue and drivers, LEDGroupBuy for white. Cost is about $150 without a heatsink shipped. Of course, using half the wattage means you can use cheaper heat sinks if you please.

Otherwise, the Aquastyle kit will work okay for some coral and less efficient than a Cree or Luxeon kit.

 

I mean push come to shove, I will just keep me t5's. I can't understand the chart you put up. If I can get better leds for a little bit more money, then I would go that route. I'm not spending around $400 for leds, just for my 40g breeder. I still have to buy other things with my tax money.

 

Since you have a limit of under 300 dollars, I'd suggest you use 1300mA drivers XT-E royal blue LEDs and 1500mA drivers for XT-E white. Using 20 of them at around 4W and 5W each should be a good enough number to keep most corals as well as keeping costs down to where you would like them. Of course, spread isn't as good, but 80 degree optics help. A 12 RB to 8 NW should be a reasonable color and adjusting is possible as well.

Basically:
6 neutral white XT-E @5W
2 warm white XT-E @5W
12 royal blue XT-E @4W

This should be pretty much the same output in white and much more royal blue than a Radion Gen2. Cost should be a bit over 200 for everything. Around 100 from LEDGroupBuy and 100 from Rapid for your heatsinks and the drivers along with misc stuff.

 

Use NW not CW too

 

Ye I can post pictures if you still want them as soon as I find my camera's usb cord, I just got back from camping for four days and don't really feel like looking now.
That table is pretty much dead on, but the prices are a little out of date, everything was up higher when I got parts for the cree fixture. However it still comes down to the circumstance. I built my 40g breeder with bridgelux because my budget was 200. I would have used cree if I had the money, however bridgelux turned out to work plenty well. If you're willing to spend the money cree would be awesome and like the bridgleux you will probably not run them at full power, just depends on what you want. Your kit would probably be plenty and the two heat sink's would be a good combination.

 

I might just add a stunner strip to my t5s. Maybe next tax time, rapid led's will be cheaper.