Going to try LED lights

[whimsy]

I don't remember how I came across it, but I just recently purchased an awesome LED fixture intended for an aquarium. It's the Current Satellite Freshwater LED+. It has a bunch of white, and RGB (red, green, blue) 6500K LEDs. It also has an amazing array of options for color and special effects like moving cloud cover. Most exciting is you can purchase a "ramp timer" that allows a "sunrise/sunset" - that is, it slowly increases or decreases the light over a 15 minute period. No more startling ON or OFF. My gecko was raised partly outside by his breeder. I'd love to bring some nature to him, if only simulated.

My plan is to have the LED fixture at the front, along with a 60W basking bulb and 5.0 bulb in a "deep dome" light fixture at the back.

The first LED fixture I saw was the Current Orbit MARINE fixture, and the K for its lights were crazy high, blue and too bright. Then I stumbled across the freshwater one.

I'll let you guys know how this goes, if it maintains a good heat gradient, etc.

 

[acpart]

I'll be interested to hear how it works out. ZooMed just started selling a reptile LED fixture with individual red, blue and white LED's that you can mix and match. I recently bought a LED screw-in bulb from lightyourreptiles.com for my new red eyed tree frog viv.

Aliza

 

[whimsy]

It looks really good. Everything combined looks much more like sunlight. It seems dimmer than my original set up (2.0 and 5.0 CFL with a 60W bulb for basking) but it just looks better. Since the LED fixture is smaller than the Exo Terra fixture I had, I placed a piece of plexiglass over that half of the screen. The screen with the warm bulbs is still open. This arrangement so far holds in more humidity, and the warm side seems a degree or two warmer, without elevating the overall basking spot temperature. The heat gradient is more pronounced, but within an acceptable range.

So the current setup is the LED fixture in the front, and the deep dome fixture in the back with a 60W and 5.0 bulb.

I will try to post a photo later today.

 

[whimsy]

Here's a pic of the new setup. The (real) sun was just rising, so the room is still quite dark.

 

[josua]

I also tried LED and also offered a T5, my geckos never prefered the bright LED, but the plants grow much faster

 

[jobscby]

I have been using an LED fixture for sometime. The book Day geckos in capivity seems to be the definitive work on these animals and it seems to make the point that brightness is very important to these animals and uvb fixtures just don't provide that. The writer raised her animals without uvb, just supplements. The book was written before the LED tech was available thus recommended some very bright fluorescents with halogen puck lights for heat. The pucks are great by the way. In any case, the LEDs work great and grow the plants well. My Grandis spents a lot more time out and about since I installed the LEDs.

 

[ofrell]

I cheaper LED option is to buy household daylight LEDs, I got the Philips 10W 800 lumen 5000k for $4 each at home depot. I put them into the 18" zoomed light fixture $25, that plus a UVB CFL and a basking light (I know lots of lights) gives quite the light show.

 

[lfreday42x]

Thanks to the fellow members here that showed me some options, I have made a decision and purchased the ZooMed 36 in. LED+UVB with 5.0 T5HO. I also went to Walmart to buy some PAR38 Halogen flood lamps for the basking area (plus some deep dome fixtures at Petsmart to hold those PAR38s). I have read and watched on this type of setup and it sounds pretty good. I will post pics once I get it in.

 

[Tokaybyt]

just to add to this thread...

I originally looked into doing LED when I was building this...









It's a 27 gallon cube tank and stand from PetSmart (it's a marineland tank-stand combo). I built the canopy above, and as stated I'd originally looked into going LED. At the time I was working for PetSmart. The tank-stand combo had sat for months due to it missing the cheap LED hood that was supposed to come with it, but didn't. We discounted it the cost of purchasing an equivalent LED fixture, but no takers. I picked it up when we got employee appreciation coupons.

Long story short, the LED option I'd looked into was AquaRay | LED Lights. A local mom & pop pet store in Albuquerque, NM used AquaRay LEDs on all their saltwater frag tanks and freshwater plant tank. The modular setup is awesome and can be virtually completely customized to your needs. Simulated sunrise, sunset, cloud, noon brightness, thunderstorm, etc. I was looking into the GroBeam Natural Daylight. But for what I wanted to do above, I was looking at close to $600 or $700 if I remember right. As you can see, on my pathetic PetSmart pay ($10/hr and I've a BS in Biology) I opted to go with 4 x T8 bulbs. The computer fans are 80mm, 1 intake and 1 exhaust, and are screened on the backside of the canopy incase of any escapees. The lights shown were for testing. The tank currently uses 2 GE Chroma 50s and 2 ReptiSun 5.0. I provide a basking site with a 20-watt Xenon under the cabinet puck light. Even if I could have afforded the AquaRay system, IIRC I'd have still needed some form of UV lighting as I'm recalling the GroBeam does not put out UV through its LEDs. The makers of Mister King also offer an LED hood with simulated features...

The intention was to put klemmeri in the tank at the request of Leann Christenson so I could gain experience dealing with small, delicate hatchling day geckos (she requested this of me as I wanted to work with her on Lygodactylus williamsi and I'd been successful in hatching williamsi, but not raising them). Unfortunately I couldn't find klemmeri for sale to save my life at the time (2012-2013), only to suddenly see tons offered for sale after I'd purchased my P. quadriocellata trio in Feb 2014, which I'm now raising offspring from.

And I'm typing too much.... :yawn:

:biggrin: