LED and UVA/UVB

[dennysfishroom]

Anyone read anything about whether any of the LED lights give off UVA/UVB? That's not important to the fish world, but it would be interesting to know for those of us who keep turtles (reptiles). Denny

[dennysfishroom]

Well, I looked up LED UVB lights. Maybe I'm not interested. They cost around $100 per LED bulb. I think I can buy lots incandescent UVB bulbs for that amount. Denny

[snakeskinner]

yeah, LED's are still too pricey to really jump on. I looked at some of those LED lights at Home Depot that screw in place of a standard bulb and I about choked when I saw the price. I can buy a box of CF's for the price of one LED. some of the aquarium lamps are getting very reasonable but a lot of other stuff is still behind on competitive pricing. I needed a small light to shine on the switch panel in my race-car and thought I'd just make a small LED light to shine on them. I went to an electronics place in Dallas while on a work trip and looked at getting individual LED's, power sources, mounts, etc. and it was going to cost me like $35 just to shine one or two LED's on my switch panel. I ended up finding a small LED work-light that is supposed to clip on a hat bill for like $8 at Academy and bought that instead. Kyle

[dennysfishroom]

Regular LED's aren't that expensive. You can get the individual bulbs/lights for 3-5$ each. It's the power supply that jacks the price up. Unfortunately, the UVB LED's are the major expense if you're thinking of building your own fixtures. There is probably not that much demand for them either, so the price may not come down based on efficiencies of scale. Denny