PC to LED conversion

Glad to hear the lights are working for you. Even though you could've spent more for better lights, I'm glad to see them pay for themselves in less than a year. I hope they continue working well and all your aquatic life stays happy. Are you running them at 100%?

 

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!

Thanks for the well wishes. I am still running the lights at 50% and 40% and everything in the tank seems happier each day. The temp was stable prior to the conversion, but with a lot of effort. No effort now. I plan on keeping things at this level for a month or so. If things are still good I will bump it up 10%. I would rather sneak up on the optimum light level rather than overshoot and have to try to heal a fried tank. I just posted some pictures in the album section. I'm still figuring things out, so there are no captions. The big white thing is a Rasta leather that has a pair of mated clowns that laid eggs 2 days ago. All the orange is Orange Zoo's--tens of thousands of them. We frag everything heavily, or we would be overrun with creatures. We cut the Rasta back by 2/3rds every 6 months. The frogspawn every year. The Zoo's are like weeds.

 

congrats and welcome to the awesomeness that is leds, seriously how much do you love being able to adjust the color of your tank??

That being said, I've had leds for a year, and I just turned them down 10% and things look a TON better.

 

I switched from metal halide to LED almost immediately. The amount of heat they let off put my tank up a few degrees. Along with the submersible pump which jacked the temperature up to 30 degrees.

Unfortunately though the cat wasn't too impressed as she no longer had anywhere warm to sit

 

PC to LED: The $ Accounting

Here it is. I am very happy with the conversion to LED lighting. The tank is thriving and my wife likes it, so it is a winner already. The main reason for considering a change of this magnitude, however, was the cost of operating the PC setup. I obviously do not have to spend almost $1000/year for bulbs, so that alone pays for the LED's in 7 months. The power savings required a little more calculation. I used the access to my electrical account history and so could calculate the KWH used by month for the last 10 years(the tank has been set up for 13 years). Comparing month by month, getting an average and applying the KWH costs, I calculate that the LED conversion is saving me $48 per month. This is not an insignificant amount particularly considering that all those extra KWH went into heat, not light. I'm sold on LED's.

 

Congrats on the conversion and success. Those are great savings and will add up each year they last.