Fiber optic lighting.

[steven11]

Alright Mike - you may not like me for calling you out on this. But I have been thinking of that project we were talking about at SeaMax. I am very interested in its potential. A couple of questions that I have are: what kind of drop in PAR (I know you hate PAR as a reference) do you experience? Will the fiber carry the exact color of the light source to the tank? Could you put multiple bulbs in the light box? Could you run multiple fiber cables from the box?

Here is what I am thinking. I have a 250 with a foot print of 5'x3'. It is a pain in the ass to light. At SeaMax, there was a 100w LED that put out a massive amount of light. I'm thinking a light box containing one of those and a bunch of blue leds all being dimmable, running into one fiber cable would allow me to light the whole tank. As well as adjust the color of the out put. I am sure that I am missing pieces to this puzzle and I am assuming that I will be getting enough light to grow corals at 30" deep. What do you think?


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[Katchupoy]

Steven, good thing you are playing with other options in terms of light.

This is just for reference. If you are going to do a DIY LED on your tank...
60 x 36 = 2160 square inches surface area.
2160 / 15 sq in per led = 144 high power leds
144 x $10 = $1,440 cost to build a DIY which includes the cree leds, dimmable drivers, heat sinks and what not.

Just for reference on your fiber project.

 

[mojoreef]

Oh man Steve your making me work, lol. This was a project we did a good 5 or 6 years ago. We basically did a rough design and built an illuminator out of alluminum and then put a 250 watt MH in to, attached some fiber optic cable to the output. We put a light meter on it and if I remember we were getting some good numbers, but life got busy and we just kind of stopped screwing around with it. I think we had around a 100 bucks into the working model (not including the ballast and bulb I already had. I tell ya what if it is something someone is interested in playing around with I will donate whatever I have (which I believe is everything) to the cause??

Mojo

 

[steven11]

Mike, I may take you up on that. As long as I can pick what's left of your brain along the way...

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