Lighting thoughts

Had to break down my 135 a year and a half ago and am just about to build another reef set up. I want to go with a 48 X 24 X 30H. I have everything in mind of what i want to do with filtration but lighting is not set yet.

I like DIY stuff and have been looking into LED's. Most of the LED setups I have seen look like there are shadows in many spaces on the LR builds. With a little research I noticed that most of these LED's have about a 20 degree view angle. Does anyone know if people have tried to mount these on angles? something like \/\/\/\/\/ (but not at that extreme) to get a better light spread? I think it should help a lot.

Also in my brain storming I remembered when I was looking for HID lights for my truck that they have these lights now at specific color temps. Sounds crazy but has anyone tried lighting with automotive HID's yet. They are very inexpensive in comparison.

I don't know, these thoughts may be way off. What's everyone's take on these ideas?

 

I am interested in the response. Pretty surprised no one has chimed in!

 

Putting the leds on angles like that sounds like a super smart idea you would only need them at a very slight angle I think it would really work but you wont know till you try it.

As for the car lights 2 problems it runs on dc so you will need a transformer and there has to be a reason why no one has used them lol

 

I'm very interested to see what people may have to say about the car lighting as an option. So,

bump

for you.

 

You can put them on angles. I am not sure where your seeing 20 degree though? Generally DIY LEDs are available in 80, 60 and 40 degree. The wider ones won't have much of a spotlight effect and it really shouldn't matter about the angles. Even the narrower ones, are more spread out than say a MH, so they are going to have tremendously less shadows than a MH.

For a 30" high tank, you'll want 40 degree however. You could go even more focused, but the more focused you go, the more leds you need, to cover the same footprint, so, the less efficient it is. Also, to go lower, you would need to go outside of the typicall hobby supply sources. They do exist though, I think I've seen lenses for CREE LEDs, down to around 4.5 degrees.

The angles should be good. I don't know if you need that extreme. I use some PAR30 LEDs, at angles to highlight certain corals. You could do angles, or maybe if you really like DIY, put some on swivels, so you can customize the angles of some, as needed.


As to automotive HID, some people played with it a bit for a while and there was a cult HID following even LOL. IIRC though, the big problem was heat and efficiency. They really just didn't add anything over conventional lighting, and I think the idea kind of died once LEDs became more readily available.