Pendant-style lighting opinions

S

SFlow

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Hi guys,

I am looking at buying, or maybe building my own, prendant-style lights for my tank.

Some options I have considered:
  • Orphek Kaspian
  • Kessils
  • "Black Box" options
Any of you have experience with the above over a mixed reef? What works, what does not? Any other opinions you may have? The spotlight effect?

My reasoning for this style of light instead of the more popular spread LED units, if I can call it that, is the Aesthetics more than anything else.
 
The Kaspian is a nice light as it doesn’t have any fans that can break. A friend of mine ran Kessils on his tank, and in his opinion they are not very well built, and none of them lasted past 3 years. He put Kaspians on and is happy now. They do come at a premium though. Black box pendants I am not sure of. Else there are some nice multichips on ebay if you want to try a DIY route, like this one:

rover.ebay.com

100W Cree Epileds LED UV 430nm Blue 450nm 470nm Cyan 490nm Red 660nm White 7000K | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for 100W Cree Epileds LED UV 430nm Blue 450nm 470nm Cyan 490nm Red 660nm White 7000K at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
rover.ebay.com
 
Thanks for the feedback. This friend of yours, did he use the white or blue Kaspian?

DIY is something I am seriously considering because the Orphek premium is quite high. Something as simple as the Kaspian which only has the powersupply heatsink, LED, and lens can't be that hard to build. The biggest thing is the quality of the LED.
 
SFlow said:
Thanks for the feedback. This friend of yours, did he use the white or blue Kaspian?

DIY is something I am seriously considering because the Orphek premium is quite high. Something as simple as the Kaspian which only has the powersupply heatsink, LED, and lens can't be that hard to build. The biggest thing is the quality of the LED.
Click to expand...

It was the reef Kaspian that had quite a few different colours in the multichip. If you want to go DIY, just make sure the heatsink is big enough and possibly underdrive the chip (like 70w driver on a 100w chip), which will ensure it lasts. Else you will have to put a fan on, the Kaspian heatsink is massive, not sure where to find that size one locally.
 
hotdog83 said:
It was the reef Kaspian that had quite a few different colours in the multichip. If you want to go DIY, just make sure the heatsink is big enough and possibly underdrive the chip (like 70w driver on a 100w chip), which will ensure it lasts. Else you will have to put a fan on, the Kaspian heatsink is massive, not sure where to find that size one locally.
Click to expand...
Ok, I am assuming that would be the "white" which replicates a 20,000K MH Radium bulb.

I was thinking about sourcing some of these bad boys if I do DIY.

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With this I'd comfortable be able to put 120w high density COBs with nice spectrum if I could source them. But it is proving quite difficult to find something that even resembles the Kaspian's in terms of spectrum and intensity.
 
Check that ebay link, the chip spectrum looks good, and they are Cree and Epileds individual chips. Just got some myself yesterday, the 2 chips on the right, with a white and blue Cree chip on left:

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hotdog83 said:
Check that ebay link, the chip spectrum looks good, and they are Cree and Epileds individual chips.
Click to expand...
That is indeed not a bad option. But to get the heatsinks I'm going to have to go through a bit more effort already. Can't even find the heatsinks on ebay or Aliexpress. To make it worth the effort I've been in discussions with a chinese LED cob manufacturer. I'm almost at the point where I have a finished product. The idea is as follows:
  • Two custom 120w LED COB designs that closely resemble the light spectrum produced by the market leaders, i.e. Orphek, Radion and Kessil
  • Mean Well HLG-120H-36B
  • That beast heatsink which is overpowered at a 200w rating
The above will probably cost me a bit in just the manufacturing and that doesn't even include shipping and customs, but even with all that the total cost will be well worth it if it turns out right. The cost is still way lower than anything locally available.

I really like the simplicity of something like the Kaspian because there is no tinkering involved. It is just setting teh intensity you want and that's it. This does however make some other things harder like acclimation and getting the spectrum exaclty right as you can't adjust afterwards.
 
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You can probably ask the manufacturers to make a 4 or 5 channel multichip on different dimmable drivers, then you can adjust the spectrum to your liking by channel. If you put a fan on the back, you can get big enough heatsinks on Bid Or Buy under LED Select. Can also get drivers there. I think my drivers, heatsinks and chips worked out to around R1000 or so per unit.
 
My whole mission with this is to have completely passive cooled lights. Fan noise is not very pleasant. So, this almost forces me to get massive heatsinks that are overpowered for the application to ensure that the heat can be properly dissipated. I have not been able to find any heatsinks locally that are not very expensive or massive. So I will be going the china route anyway.

I have spent quite a bit of time researching the idea spectrum in my opinion and I think I have a really good blend of light. And, as I've previously said, I don't want the hassle of having to tinker with the light to find the perfect spectrum via tuning. It should just be right from the get go. To achieve this I have decided to make two different units, kind of like how the two Kaspian pendants differentiate themselves. So one light will be a well mixed spectrum emulating a full spectrum reef light. The other will be a light focused exclusively on the blue spectrum(s) which will give that extra punch. Combining these two units should allow me to achieve a pretty balanced yet powerful light.
 
Aah, ok. Just make sure you do some spectrum analysis on the lights, or match it to say the AB+ spectrum of Radion. I've seen with DIY lights that it sounds good until you put it on the tank, and then doesn't look as you expected. I'm on my third type of chip now, and every time I was sure this time it is going to look great.
 
hotdog83 said:
Aah, ok. Just make sure you do some spectrum analysis on the lights, or match it to say the AB+ spectrum of Radion. I've seen with DIY lights that it sounds good until you put it on the tank, and then doesn't look as you expected. I'm on my third type of chip now, and every time I was sure this time it is going to look great.
Click to expand...
I definitely will thanks. That is the one fear I have with this process, what if I don't like the actual color emitted by the light. I can research as much as I want about hte perfect color specrum for the coral but that does not mean it will be anything close to pleasant to my eyes.
 
Hello guys, I don't know how many of you kept up to date on this thread but it's time for an update.

I powered through with my original idea of having my own design manufacturer and the result arrived earlier today. As I've mentioned previously this is a completely passive-cooled LED solution. There are four parts:
  • LED COB
  • Lens
  • Heatsink
  • Powersupply
The design was very simple, with the exception of the LED array design. So the package that arrived looked as follows:
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A bunch of boxes:m41:
 
There are five boxes. One contains the power supplies and power leads. The power supplies are four Mean Well HLG-120H-36B LED PWM dimmable drivers. I already have a Raspberry Pi 3 which I will be programming to manage the dimming, but god only knows when that'll actually happen.
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The other four boxes contain the LED modules. The units are identical with the exception of the LED COB composition. So each of the units has a massive heatsink capable of dissipating 300W without any active cooling. Each of the heatsinks has a sturdy handing bracket/hook for easy mounting.

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Now for the LED units themselves and the lenses. Each of the LED modules has a massive 120 degree waterproof lens. The lens looks like this:
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The LED COBs themselves are a massive matrix of 3w LED diodes running at 1W each, in a parallel-series circuit. The LED COB layout is currently in two colors: blue and white. These color compositions are similar to the two options available from brands like Orphek. The one a serious array of various blue color spectrum diodes, and the other a wide array of diodes that looks similar to a 20000K metal halide bulb. Here is a closeup of each of the matrices:

The WHITE array:
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The BLUE matrix:
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I have not actually installed the lights yet but being impatient as I am, I had to test it out at least. So I held the light over my cube to test out the difference. The tank currently has a 250W Aquamedic Metal Halide over that I got for next to nothing a while ago. So here are two coral closeups showing the color pop difference between the metal Halide and the BLUE pendant.

The little zoa on the rock:
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And the purple and green hammer:
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The corals weren't every happy as the lights didn't come on till 20mins before this test due to some electrical issues because of all the rain.
 
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