LED watts per gallon?

[wildstick]

if i am going to use a LED how many watts do i need for my 10gal?
i'll be using 3watts bulb (spotlight). thanks

[shrimpNewbie]

Watts per gallon is useless especially with LEDs. I can't give you a simple answer besides more is always more. You can dim LEDs down to fit your tank you can't overdrive them if you start with too little. So over planning with LEDs is good, personally I would do two rows of six cree XML and dim them down a lot I'm sure you can get away with 2 rows of four though I just don't like spotlighting or weird color shadows

[Hoppy]

If I understand the question, you want to use screw-in LED spotlight bulbs. That would be a mistake. You would get very bright spots of light with little light in the areas between the bright spots. Flood light bulbs might work ok, but there is no standard specification for those, so you would need to use a specific brand and model flood light bulb, one that someone has measured the light intensity for. I don't know of any example of that.

[Geoscouter]

Originally Posted by shrimpNewbie

Watts per gallon is useless especially with LEDs. I can't give you a simple answer besides more is always more. You can dim LEDs down to fit your tank you can't overdrive them if you start with too little. So over planning with LEDs is good, personally I would do two rows of six cree XML and dim them down a lot I'm sure you can get away with 2 rows of four though I just don't like spotlighting or weird color shadows

Whoa I think that is way overkill for 10 gal tank! I have 12 XPG on a 29 and even at 1 amp they are too bright sitting on the glass top with no optics.


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