Led question

[pmcarbrey]

For some reason the only infor I can find on these LED's is in Chinese, I was wondering if anyone knew whether or not the would be suited for aquarium use?
http://www.dhgate.com/waterproof-5m-...tml#s1-10-null

It comes in a 5m strip so I was figuring that I could do 4 rows over my 55g

And the next question, what would I need for a driver?

[allegori]

It will work for general lighting. A 55 gallon is pretty tall and you will need more powerful LEDs and possibly optics to penetrate all the way down to the substrate and create enough par for plant growth. For a short tank it could work for growing plants if you use enough of them.

[pmcarbrey]

What if I also on top of that added a 2 bulb T5 fixture? Would that be enough to be considered high light?

[pmcarbrey]

Or should I just get this? http://www.aquabid.com/cgi-bin/aucti...ing&1361209744

[Aponogeton]

Quality of strip LED's range when they come from china.
I would recommend finding a seller in the United States, they get there quicker and are more expensive but the real reason is that you can return them more easily. They all still come from China though.

Your looking at the 3528's The 5050's are much brighter. You also want the 300 led's per meter roll not the 150 led per meter. The strips are very sensitive to bending, so when you install them, you don't unroll them till your ready to mount them.

They aren't cost effective though, they do look nice when you get everything done, but they generate a good amount of heat despite being led's because they used diodes/resister to drop the voltage which waists energy, but is the most economical way to manufacture the strips.

I've done a lot of work with these, and high power LED units up to 100 Watt dies.

[Aponogeton]

This is the first setup I made with 5050 LED's, it is made of all stainless steel and watercooled. This was on my old 29 gallon aquarium. It required a lot of tedious wiring to minimize voltage drop across the strips.






Also these were RGB so this could be done...



If you have any questions let me know.