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GU10 LED Build Thread (Chinese Ebay Lights)


TinyGiant

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I think I've mentioned these particular ones on here before but I already talked to this dude before and he said he would do a custom.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-3W-4W-5W-LED-Spotlight-White-warm-Red-Green-Blue-E27-E14-GU10-G5-3-MR16-Bulb-/180892600466?pt=US_Light_Bulbs&var=480145594582&hash=item2a1e0a0892

 

Would one work? Only asking cause I can get a standard back and put it in a desklamp I have. Not sure what ratio would be good if I should do the 4 led or 5. I'd really appreciate whatever input you guys have cause I should probably get more light over my stuff as soon as I can just on general principle.

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--chris--

I think painting zoas/palys with a broad stroke like "beginner coral" is definitely a mistake. Zoas can be some of the most fickle, difficult to keep corals. Look at those Atlantic blues that were ragingly popular a few years ago...no one could keep them alive, they all melted. I see a few in the trade now, but rarely and it seems like the price is much higher than it should be for their colors (IE, they must not grow quickly/hard to keep alive).

 

Then there are those damn brown palys that are almost as bad as aptasia. Im pretty sure they can THRIVE in hypo/hyper saline, 70 degree water poured from a garbage truck.

 

Painting them in one stroke is impossible.

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I swapped to these last year, my tank was doing amazingly on a pair of arc pods with compact fluorescent,

I changed to 3cw and 3 blue with 60degree lenses and now my tank looks awful, killed almost everything, the only thing that has done well in my tank is pulsing xenia that i don't want! please help!

I had a huge ric that looked ready to split that is now shriveled up but intensely bright!

 

I have the lights about 10inches above the water but i do have a glass lid to stop evap

Holy cow. I have 7 over my 10 gal. You were probably burning everything in that tank. Shoot for half or less of what you were running over it.

 

For real only one of the combo bulbs would be enough you think? Definitely would have to have like 90 degree optics. Lol do you have a link? I know you said they're all over here but this is kind of a huge thread...

 

I'm having a hard time finding them on ebay but I'll keep going through the thread.

search for the seller luckzdl2008. he has them (i know, I just ordered 5 more of them a couple days ago for an upgrade to a larger tank).

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mini_matt

Holy cow. I have 7 over my 10 gal. You were probably burning everything in that tank. Shoot for half or less of what you were running over it.

 

search for the seller luckzdl2008. he has them (i know, I just ordered 5 more of them a couple days ago for an upgrade to a larger tank).

 

 

 

Compared to the model in the first post you have different lenses and a seemingly non-proportional hanging height and a glass filter (lid) over the tank. Can you describe any other differences between your installation and the one in the model?

 

Also, what are the tank's dimensions?

 

What I can tell you so far: The new lenses drop the bulb intensity by half. Common glass, when perfectly clean, only transmits 80% of the light that hits it. You would need to double the bulbs or drop the fixture to 1/2 the model system's 12" to make up for the lens change.

 

 

-Matt

 

So 2 different Opinions, more details I posted before I bought the lights and the comments/advice were encouraging,

 

I have 4x1W cool white 3off and 4x1W blue 3off

All with 60degree lenses aprox 7inches above water with a glass condensation lid, tank is 16L similar size to JBJ Picotope

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First it can be helpful to distinguish between opinion (you'll burn your coral) and fact (30° lenses are twice as intense as 60°).

 

I didn't really give you anything but facts. The reason being to help you see that Tiny's model system which is detailed in the first post of this thread is set up purposefully to exploit the facts. It is an excellent example to model after - even if you don't grok all the facts behind it.

 

2b:1w bulbs are a simple deviation that doesn't really alter the original plan in any significant way.

 

I would suggest you use Tiny's formula for determining # of bulbs as well as his method for placement of them. This will be good for any tank that is 12" wide or less and 24" deep or less.

 

-Matt

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Not sure what ratio would be good if I should do the 4 led or 5.

I'd probably avoid those bulbs - stick w/3x1w - and I'd stick to the ratio in the first post.

 

(These points have been answered in this thread several times before. You can also read some folks' experience who tried these bulbs. If you are planning to use GU10's and don't plan to use the model, you are doing yourself a real disservice in spending money before you finish reading this thread. It's not that long. ;-))

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--chris--

Ill have 12 2:1 (RB:W) Gu10's from Luckzdl for sale pretty soon, if anyone wants to call dibs. Ill include the sockets, and if possible ill leave them wired up for an easy install...although i am not sure i can do that.

 

PM if anyone wants them.

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mini_matt

First it can be helpful to distinguish between opinion (you'll burn your coral) and fact (30° lenses are twice as intense as 60°).

 

I didn't really give you anything but facts. The reason being to help you see that Tiny's model system which is detailed in the first post of this thread is set up purposefully to exploit the facts. It is an excellent example to model after - even if you don't grok all the facts behind it.

 

2b:1w bulbs are a simple deviation that doesn't really alter the original plan in any significant way.

 

I would suggest you use Tiny's formula for determining # of bulbs as well as his method for placement of them. This will be good for any tank that is 12" wide or less and 24" deep or less.

 

-Matt

Sorry :S but yes I see what you're saying now, however a few people seem to have had good results without lenses and I have read the whole thread

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I'd probably avoid those bulbs - stick w/3x1w - and I'd stick to the ratio in the first post.

 

(These points have been answered in this thread several times before. You can also read some folks' experience who tried these bulbs. If you are planning to use GU10's and don't plan to use the model, you are doing yourself a real disservice in spending money before you finish reading this thread. It's not that long. ;-))

 

Lol Idk what you're talking about not that long. Took me over half an hour to barely get through not even a quarter what with checking everything out!

 

So far the only problem I've seen people talk about with the 4 watt hk bulbs was them not fitting into a gu10 socket, but they said the problem was actually the socket dimensions in the ones they had were off. Also I'm getting an e27 base so that wouldn't be a problem.

 

I'm in the process of talking to him about doing a half blue half daylight 4 watt with the e27 base and 90 degree optics. For like 8 dollars I'm not too worried about it, I think it could work if I do it at the right height. I use my par38s like over 16 inches from the water with no optics and everything is doing awesome, I really don't understand how close a lot of people are keeping their leds over their tanks and how many they're using. Maybe for like a tank thats wall to wall sps but theres no way I can imagine even looking at some peoples tanks without going blind.

 

Should be a cool little experiment, like I said for the money I'm not worried about it, it's better than the stock lighting over there now, and worse comes to worse I can always use the two in conjuncture and also as a moonlight.

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Actually I have another question, sorry if it's been asked before, but can the optics for a par38 be used for these? Cause I already have a bunch of extra 90 degree optics laying around. It's the same principle to put them on too correct?

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Lol Idk what you're talking about not that long. Took me over half an hour to[....]

 

[....]I really don't understand how close a lot of people are keeping their leds over their tanks and how many they're using.

[....]

 

Half an hour?! (OMG the time I've spent...LOL) What's the rush? :-)

 

I suspect the people you are talking about aren't using lenses at all, gaining a 120º spread from the native lens on the bead. I you were to ask their reason, I believe aesthetics would be the answer - there are pluses and minuses. (FWIW, you can get beads with other native lenses.) Each LED is about 1/4 as intense as the same one in a standard GU10 because of this.

 

These people's intensity requirements are the same as everyone else's so they have to make up for this somehow.

 

On thing they can do to double their fixture's intensity is to cut the distance from their fixture to the water in half to six inches. If they cut the distance in half again (doubling intensity again) to 3" they will have the same relative performance of GU10's.

 

Likewise they can do similar "catch up" by doubling the number of LED's.

 

 

Actually I have another question, sorry if it's been asked before, but can the optics for a par38 be used for these? Cause I already have a bunch of extra 90 degree optics laying around. It's the same principle to put them on too correct?

 

More than likely they will be compatible. Seems like most 1w beads are the same physical package (in my limited experience).

 

90º lenses are almost like 120º lenses in performance, so if you still want to hang the light at 12" or so from the water, you'll want a tank that's on the shallow side. Reducing the water between the lights and coral has a much bigger impact than reducing the air space as in the example above.

 

-Matt

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That's the general idea I'm going for. Tank is only about 9 inches deep and I can put the bulb anywhere up to like 30 inches over the water so I'll just have to find the sweet spot with the 90 degree optics.

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If you think 30" might be nice, I'd stick with the 30º optics.

 

Some more facts... ;)

 

  • 30º optics at 30" off the water will give you a coverage diameter of about 16". That would already be spilling a lot of light over the edges of the tank I suspect.
  • 30º optics at 12" off the water will give you a coverage of about 6.5". Remember this is sufficient for a 12" wide tank up to 24" deep.

  • 90º optics at 30" would give you a 60" (5 ft) coverage diameter. Intensity is very low, plus you are spilling a ton of light outside the tank..not sure this would grow coral.

  • 90º optics at 12" would give you 24" of coverage.
  • 90º at 6" gives you a 12" diameter.

 

If your goal is to have the lights up off the tank, tighter optics like the standard 30º are your friend.

 

If the idea is to have the lights down close to the water, then you'd want to consider wider optics like 60º or wider.

 

-Matt

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Just had my first malfunction on one of these bulbs. Think the driver may be going out on it. It is blinking rapidly on and off. It is the one closest to the HOB skimmer though, so it may be the salt spray that is getting to it.

 

Edit: swapped one of the LEDs over to a broken bulb i had as a spare and it works fine. Lesson learned to be careful about salt spray.

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Half an hour?! (OMG the time I've spent...LOL) What's the rush? :-)

 

I suspect the people you are talking about aren't using lenses at all, gaining a 120º spread from the native lens on the bead. I you were to ask their reason, I believe aesthetics would be the answer - there are pluses and minuses. (FWIW, you can get beads with other native lenses.) Each LED is about 1/4 as intense as the same one in a standard GU10 because of this.

 

These people's intensity requirements are the same as everyone else's so they have to make up for this somehow.

 

On thing they can do to double their fixture's intensity is to cut the distance from their fixture to the water in half to six inches. If they cut the distance in half again (doubling intensity again) to 3" they will have the same relative performance of GU10's.

 

Likewise they can do similar "catch up" by doubling the number of LED's.

 

 

More than likely they will be compatible. Seems like most 1w beads are the same physical package (in my limited experience).

 

90º lenses are almost like 120º lenses in performance, so if you still want to hang the light at 12" or so from the water, you'll want a tank that's on the shallow side. Reducing the water between the lights and coral has a much bigger impact than reducing the air space as in the example above.

 

-Matt

 

I think I might order some 30Dgree lenses then, didn't really think about the light intensity thing when I bought them tbh but it does make sense

 

does anyone have any 30degree 4led lenses?

 

edit: ordered some lenses, only got charged the postage of 5USD :lol:

 

Now i'm wondering how much of a hindrance my glass lid is :S

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been using these leds over a 12" cube since the beginning of this thread and had excellent results. My fixture uses 6 blue 3x1w and 1 white 3x1w plus another 2 bare leds from a cannibalized bulb for moon lighting. I've prototyped a fixture/controller that controls bulb bank 1/2 on and off, does moonlight fade out at night, monitors 3 temps( water, room, and led heat sink) , has tank overtemp/undertemp alarms and LED overtemp alarm/ cutoff, and active cooling for the bulbs ie. a fan attached to the support structure.

DSC02331_zps645defb7.jpg

DSC02334_zps9ed0270c.jpg

 

this is the led temp sensor and the metal clip that attaches it to the bulb.

DSC02332_zpseb5c5089.jpg

 

Sorry for the hack-ish nature of the next pic, it seems this fixture is in a constant state of tinkering/ modification.

DSC02336_zpsfee94821.jpg

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punklibrarian

I contacted luckzdl2008 on eBay and asked if they could make some custom GU10 bulbs, they said they could. I had the following 4x1watt bulbs made for experimenting purposes:

 

2 x 3 Warm White (3000-3300K), 1 Red (620nm-630nm)

2 x 1 Blue (455nm-460nm), 1 Amber (595nm), 2 Cool White (6300-7000K)
2 x 2 Blue (455nm-460nm), 1 Purple (395nm-405nm), 1 Cool White (6300-7000K)
Ended up costing me $6USD a bulb all up. I'm building two light enclosures with three sockets each (they're going to have a GPU 4cm fan, dash mount fuse, computer style power socket w/ on & of switch each and a thermostat controlled switch to turn the fan on when it's needed). I'll be experimenting with them on a future refugium build.
I attached three photos of the light the bulbs produce on a white piece of paper with no lens (just the 120 degree LED). The photos are in the order I listed above.
Just thought I'd share my experience.

post-76640-0-87595700-1369389853_thumb.jpg

post-76640-0-09365300-1369389947_thumb.jpg

post-76640-0-31094700-1369390444_thumb.jpg

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Now i'm wondering how much of a hindrance my glass lid is :S

I'd get a cheap LUX meter so you can gauge actual performance for yourself, but you can get an idea from the numbers...

 

Clean Starphire glass transmits with about 10% loss. Regular glass could be from 20-30% loss, possibly less.

 

When you add water condensation, salt creep, algae growth, food morsels, wave effects, etc.....hard to predict the end result. You could easily gauge it with a LUX meter as time goes on and watch as your tank responds - it may turn out not to make enough difference to matter.

 

-Matt

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Small update on my scenario:

 

I decomissioned my GU10 fixture over my 50 breeder (36x18x18) a few days ago and installed a 160-watt 16Kk Maxspect Razor to test for a while. Interesting combo of colors (warm and cool white, blue and actinic blue and 420nm UV) without the light being butt-ugly. ;)

 

I never was 100% satisfied with my last build so this gives me the chance* to build a new GU10 fixture for my other tank, which is long overdue anyway. This will be a single-rail build using just the bulbs I have on hand and either stock 30° lenses or some of the "stripe" 20°x50° lenses I have on hand to test as well.

 

And a question:

 

Thinking of mounting the sockets for the new fixture to some aluminum or plastic with epoxy (e.g. J.B.Weld) but worry about the repeated heating/cooling cycle of the light degrading the surface or epoxy. I know at least a few people on here have mounted them this way - any problems to date or other thoughts on using epoxy?

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I'd get a cheap LUX meter so you can gauge actual performance for yourself, but you can get an idea from the numbers...

 

Clean Starphire glass transmits with about 10% loss. Regular glass could be from 20-30% loss, possibly less.

 

When you add water condensation, salt creep, algae growth, food morsels, wave effects, etc.....hard to predict the end result. You could easily gauge it with a LUX meter as time goes on and watch as your tank responds - it may turn out not to make enough difference to matter.

 

-Matt

Thanks Matt, I will be switching out to 30 lenses once they arrive and will see how they fair with and without the lid, now thinking how stupid I was buying the wrong lenses :S

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mcarroll, why not use superglue? It never softens after it dries. Superglue gel is super easy to use.

If you have a Dollar Tree store near you, they sell superglue gel, 3 tubes for $1.

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Thanks Matt, I will be switching out to 30 lenses once they arrive and will see how they fair with and without the lid, now thinking how stupid I was buying the wrong lenses :S

Bah...they'll come in handy down the road, at least to experiment with. :)

 

mcarroll, why not use superglue? It never softens after it dries. Superglue gel is super easy to use.

If you have a Dollar Tree store near you, they sell superglue gel, 3 tubes for $1.

I didn't remember anyone using superglue, but it could be an option. Once again I'm not so sure how it would take the possible heating-cooling cycles it might have to go through, and if I could count the number of superglue repairs ov the years that have held up vs those that did not I'm pretty sure it would not be a favorable stat.

 

At least planned so far, I would be bonding ceramic to wood. Freemind: you or anyone else here done this already? How long ago and how does the glue look now?

 

It would require extended clamping time vs epoxy or superglue, but I'm wondering about using silicone too.

 

-Matt

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