# Elive LED fixtures



## Pegasus70 (Jul 24, 2013)

Has anyone used the Elive LED track lighting system to light a planted tank? I was looking at the LED Tracklight advanced series 48-60 inch model to light a standard 90 gallon tank.
Anyone have experience with this system? What additional pods would you add?


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

I looked through there pages and it does not sound like that bad of fixture untill I saw that each pad comes out to only 1 Watt. With a 90 Gallon tank I would not consider going less than 60 Watts total and would recommend even going to 90 Watts if you want a planted tank. 60 Watts would give you low lighting and 90 watts closer to mid lighting with quality LED's.


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## AEWHistory (Jul 6, 2008)

Is this the one where you can add modules? Depending on cost, colors, output, etc, I could see this really being a nice option. However, I'd like to hear from people who have more experience than me (that'd be almost everyone when talking LEDs).


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

AEWHistory said:


> Is this the one where you can add modules? Depending on cost, colors, output, etc, I could see this really being a nice option. However, I'd like to hear from people who have more experience than me (that'd be almost everyone when talking LEDs).


Yes this is the fixture where you can pods that are rated at 1 Watts each if you decide you want more light. A great idea but by the time you add enough POD's to get your light to a reasonable level I would hate to see the final price tag. Remember you will need 60 to 90 pads for the 90 gallon tank and I'm not sure how many will actually fit in a single 48" fixture.


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## Pegasus70 (Jul 24, 2013)

TropTrea said:


> Yes this is the fixture where you can pods that are rated at 1 Watts each if you decide you want more light. A great idea but by the time you add enough POD's to get your light to a reasonable level I would hate to see the final price tag. Remember you will need 60 to 90 pads for the 90 gallon tank and I'm not sure how many will actually fit in a single 48" fixture.


So are you saying that there is some kind of watts per gallon rule for LED lighting? That measure, although a reasonable way to estimate lighting needs, wasn't all that great for the fluorescent bulbs it was originally dreamed up for. Has someone developed a similar "rule" for LED's? Unless I am mistaken, which is certainly a possibility, LED's generate a lot more light per watt of power consumed.

Yes, I understand lumens and PAR and PUR etc. Just curious if anyone knows of a watts per gallon guideline for LED's. And, if so, how useful is it in reality?


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## ObiQuiet (Oct 9, 2009)

Pegasus70 said:


> And, if so, how useful is it in reality?


It would be terrible. Since watts are a measure of the amount of electricity consumed by a light, and since different lights vary widely in their efficiency of converting electric input into light output, its a pretty useless measure.

Especially since:
* Technologies (incandescent, flourescent, LED, halogen) vary widely in how efficiently they convert watts to light. 
* Lamps within a technology type also vary widely in how they convert watts to light (bulb shape, reflectors, beam angle, power supply type, continuous technical improvements in LEDs...)
* The type of light (wavelengths) is critical to plant growth, but it varies too, and has no correlation to the electricity consumed.

I suspect you know all this (so it's not directed at you)...

Although I rarely make emphatic statements, I feel the need to point out that using watts as even a rough guide for lighting makes no sense in the post-incandescent world.


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

Pegasus70 said:


> So are you saying that there is some kind of watts per gallon rule for LED lighting? That measure, although a reasonable way to estimate lighting needs, wasn't all that great for the fluorescent bulbs it was originally dreamed up for. Has someone developed a similar "rule" for LED's? Unless I am mistaken, which is certainly a possibility, LED's generate a lot more light per watt of power consumed.
> 
> Yes, I understand lumens and PAR and PUR etc. Just curious if anyone knows of a watts per gallon guideline for LED's. And, if so, how useful is it in reality?


Yes your correct that Watts per gallon are more accurate for florescent lighting that it is for LED lighting. Trying to establish a guide based on Watts per gallon is very difficult because of the wide range of quality in the LED' industry. You can purchase a LED light that produces any where from 60 to 200 lumens per watt. With Florescent lighting the range is closer to 70 to 90 lumen per watt.

When your looking at comercial fixtures there are things to watch for like the type of LED they are using. As an example they can use a name brand 3 watt LED that will give them say 400 lumens of light, or they can use 3 one watt LED's to give them perhaps anywhere from 300 to 450 lumens of light, or they may use 30 1/10 of a watt LED's giving them somewhere between 200 and 300 lumen of light. Considering most manufacturers are looking for saving money on the build chances are they going to use smaller LED's which are must less expensive even though they may be less efficient.

An example is you can build a 30 Watt LED light fixture three different ways.

1. With using 300 1/10 of a watt LED's designed in the 1980 for roughly under 5 cents each for a cost of $15.00 in LED's and get out 1,800 lumens of light,

2. you can use 30 LED's rated at 3 Watts each but only run them at 1 watt each roughly $3.00 per LED for a cost of $90 and get a light fixture that puts out 5,400 lumens.

3 the final way of doing it would be getting 10 LED's rated at 5 or 10 Watts each costing $4.50 each for a total cost of $45 for the LED's. These LEDs when run at 3 Watts each will deliver about 4,500 lumens.

Now compare this to a florescent light fixture in case 1 you need roughly a 24 Watt Florescent bulb, in the second case a 72 Watt florescent bulb, third case would need 60 Watts of florescent lighting.

With LED's you also have the option of concentrating the light more in the part of the light spectrum that benefits the plants. Mainly in to red and blue parts of the spectrum. This gives you the capability of increasing the PUR however it usually at the expense of diminishing the visual beauty.

It is possible today to build a LED light fixture that mimics 60 watts of Florescent lighting with the same benefits for plants using only 15 Watts. Anything additional would be for the viewers pleasure.


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## Pegasus70 (Jul 24, 2013)

Based on the product information available, these lights generate roughly 95 lumens per pod. If each pod is one watt, then we are talking about 95 lumens per watt. That strikes me as a middle of the road number at best. I have no idea what the PAR or PUR is. 

So what would you put over a standard 90 gallon tank to support at least moderate light level plants? Not going to grow glosso or baby tears. Maybe Stauragyne repens at the bottom. So that would probably be the plant I would most worry about.

How about four high output T5 bulbs? Two daylight and two 6500K perhaps?


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## abrooks12376 (Jul 22, 2014)

With leds par is king, watts is basically irrelevant, while a 3 watt led may be more powerful, doesn't always translate to par. Par is basically how far the usable light will travel into the water column. Not all leds are made equal, some contain tiny little high quality reflectors that will.give that single led more punch. They can be deceiving too, may look bright but not getting to plants lower in the tank. All that being said.. the elive fixture will leave you in the very low light area.
Around 30 par would be low
30-70- med.
70+ high..
On a 90 (21" tall??) You could grab a finnex planted plus to dance with med. Light. Anything higher and we'll need to talk co2 and fancy dry ferts.


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

I have run the tread and have done a thread and search for individuals using LED's as well as florescent lighting. Then I normalized to date to find out what wattage correlates to give you a PAR of 50 at the substrate. 

For LED';s the range was roughly between 1/2 watt pre-gallon and just a little over 2 watts per gallon. For florescent the range was from 2 watts per gallon up to an about 5 watts per gallon.

But the interesting thing is this also correlates for LED's with a quality difference between the available LED's that are out there. on a Lumens scale you can find LEDs out there barely giving 60 Lumen per watt and others that are approaching 200 lumen per Watt.

With that considered even the cheapest LED's do come close to the averge florescent bulb.

But yes you need to pay attention to the power spectrum of the LED's. This is where I believe they have the super advantage. You can tune the LED fixture to your plant needs and then just ass a little more (green) light to make it pleasing to the eye. Results are the need for much less total wattage. 

Commercial LED fixtures are designed for a wide audience. 70% for fish only tanks and the other 30% split between planted and reef tanks. The Reef tanks taking up a bigger part of the marked than planted require a much different light spectrum. So in the commercial designed fixtures we are the smallest part of their market . Therefore only a few manufacturers will design a fixture for our needs specifically.


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## Pegasus70 (Jul 24, 2013)

TropTrea said:


> I have run the tread and have done a thread and search for individuals using LED's as well as florescent lighting. Then I normalized to date to find out what wattage correlates to give you a PAR of 50 at the substrate.
> 
> For LED';s the range was roughly between 1/2 watt pre-gallon and just a little over 2 watts per gallon. For florescent the range was from 2 watts per gallon up to an about 5 watts per gallon.
> 
> ...


I have made the same observation about availability of standard commercial lighting options for planted tanks. For example, I used Deep Blue HO T5 fixtures for a number of years. Problem is, they only came with a reef spectrum. One had to buy that then change out the actinic bulb for a 6500 K bulb. I thought this was simply because my LFS didn't stock the planted tank T5 HO version. But when I checked out their website they don't even make a 48 inch high output T5 fixture. I mean.... really? All they need to do is change one bulb? Are we really that small a market? I have been agonizing over how I wanted to light this tank (a little over 24 inches deep as I recall). My LFS just got the elive fixtures in and are pretty convinced that these are the best thing out there. I wasn't convinced then and I am even less convinced now. Problem is, they really don't have anything better. They have the Kessel LED's but I really hate their color rendition. And the only tanks I have seen them used on had low light plants. I suppose my best option is to save some money and have a custom fixture made.


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

Pegasus70 said:


> I have made the same observation about availability of standard commercial lighting options for planted tanks. For example, I used Deep Blue HO T5 fixtures for a number of years. Problem is, they only came with a reef spectrum. One had to buy that then change out the actinic bulb for a 6500 K bulb. I thought this was simply because my LFS didn't stock the planted tank T5 HO version. But when I checked out their website they don't even make a 48 inch high output T5 fixture. I mean.... really? All they need to do is change one bulb? Are we really that small a market? I have been agonizing over how I wanted to light this tank (a little over 24 inches deep as I recall). My LFS just got the elive fixtures in and are pretty convinced that these are the best thing out there. I wasn't convinced then and I am even less convinced now. Problem is, they really don't have anything better. They have the Kessel LED's but I really hate their color rendition. And the only tanks I have seen them used on had low light plants. I suppose my best option is to save some money and have a custom fixture made.


For me the best option was to build my own. It came out less than half the cost of anything of similar wattage that is on the market, it was more efficient in terms of PAR per Watt than most commercial fixtures, and it was balanced to a light spectrum that is pleasing to my eye.

When I was running Reef tanks my DIY fixtures were hitting 100+ PAR at the substrate. This is way more even the highest light demanding plants will ever need with CO2. Right now my goal is to have some hot spots with 50+ PAR at the substrate in areas for high light demanding plants and keeping the rest of the tank in the high 20's to low 30's.

If I add CO2 in the future I can always increase my light by just changing the drivers if need be.


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