Reef Central Online Community - View Single Post - My 125 Gallon LED Reef Penninsula tank build

zachts · 01/13/2013, 11:12 AM

Very nice, your very organized, my table just has stuff strewn all over when I'm building a light, looks like a tornadow hit radio shack and dumped the after math on my kitchen table right now

I just wanted to pass along some caution learned from personal experiance and research relating to the violets. follow the vendors recomendation and resist the urge to run them anywhere near 500mA or it is likely that the plastic dome on the violets will start to brown and burn after a month or two. use a limititing resistor to keep you from accidently turning the pot up beyond the set current.

I've had over a dozen from 3 different sources burn up now, it has something to do with the plastic in the dome and the light being emited at the near UV range. Keep an eye on them and if they start to brown you can "pop" off the dome and they will keep working just fine. The LED chips themselves seem fine it just seems that not all plastic used in those domes is created equal.

I'll be tagging a long, interested in how they perform as I like a very "violet" heavy spectrum on my tanks.

I'm not meaning to scare you just keep and eye on them, the specs on the ones they sell now seam to indicate they are a newer version than the ones I've used from this vendor, but the domes look the same. Maybe they upgraded those too!

01/13/2013, 11:12 AM	#6
zachts Registered Member Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: St. Louis, MO. Posts: 3,259	Very nice, your very organized, my table just has stuff strewn all over when I'm building a light, looks like a tornadow hit radio shack and dumped the after math on my kitchen table right now I just wanted to pass along some caution learned from personal experiance and research relating to the violets. follow the vendors recomendation and resist the urge to run them anywhere near 500mA or it is likely that the plastic dome on the violets will start to brown and burn after a month or two. use a limititing resistor to keep you from accidently turning the pot up beyond the set current. I've had over a dozen from 3 different sources burn up now, it has something to do with the plastic in the dome and the light being emited at the near UV range. Keep an eye on them and if they start to brown you can "pop" off the dome and they will keep working just fine. The LED chips themselves seem fine it just seems that not all plastic used in those domes is created equal. I'll be tagging a long, interested in how they perform as I like a very "violet" heavy spectrum on my tanks. I'm not meaning to scare you just keep and eye on them, the specs on the ones they sell now seam to indicate they are a newer version than the ones I've used from this vendor, but the domes look the same. Maybe they upgraded those too!