125 GAL Mixed reef

Z

Zakk

Guest
Not a problem, I'm in byron, can likely explain them a lot better in person anyway, and as long as you're fairly handy with soldering you should do fine (and likely do a much neater job of the wiring too) :)
 
Darryl_V

Darryl_V

Super Active Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2011
Location
Woodstock, Ontario
Zakk link said:
I'm using the led's from rapid led. 

I went with a mix of white and royal blues, although it doesn't hurt to throw an extra blue in the mix.  Those are 12 LEd's per 9\" hear sink (so I can direct the light better).  80 degree lenses up the par value.  I then grabbed an 'actinic' pack from the site and up it onto a 12\" stip heatsink. 

The setups are neat.  You can buy a dimmable setup, and you could wire 12 blue to one driver and 12 white to another, then change the output of each colour until you have your perfect mix.  I did 6 and 6 on each heatsink so that each sink has its own driver (easy to diagnose and replace).  It's a bugger to solder everything, but all told I spent about $1K on everything, and now pretty much every bit of it can be replaced (although each LED is rated for thousnds of hours use).  So after that outlay, my upkeep is bare minimum (bulbs for my last setup could be $300 every few months). 

I also grabbed the 'dual fan kit' which allows you to just plug in normal computer case fans, and they even had a speed control.  I turned it down until I could feel the heat on the heatsink.  The LED's run hot enough to loosed the solder if you don't run fans (found that out the annoyingly hard way).
Click to expand...

Im running a 50/50 mix of T5 and LED on the frag tank.  The light is working awesome.  For my LED I used 24 LED (16 Royal Blue and 8 Cool White) on 48" worth of 1" aluminum heatsink.  Non dimmable.....running fans.  The color is 20kish on just the LED.....looks pretty good.  I really like the royal blue LED for pop.  Be careful of salt spray ruining the LEDs....I was running 8 royal blue with a 250w MH with no glass protecting the LEDs and they stoped working....so I need to see if I can salvage any of them.  The new setup has a 3mm glass over the LEDs.

What is the mix of blue and white Glen?
 
Z

Zakk

Guest
Darryl_V link said:
[quote author=Zakk link=topic=1240.msg8892#msg8892 date=1313183239]
I'm using the led's from rapid led. 

I went with a mix of white and royal blues, although it doesn't hurt to throw an extra blue in the mix.  Those are 12 LEd's per 9\" hear sink (so I can direct the light better).  80 degree lenses up the par value.  I then grabbed an 'actinic' pack from the site and up it onto a 12\" stip heatsink. 

The setups are neat.  You can buy a dimmable setup, and you could wire 12 blue to one driver and 12 white to another, then change the output of each colour until you have your perfect mix.  I did 6 and 6 on each heatsink so that each sink has its own driver (easy to diagnose and replace).  It's a bugger to solder everything, but all told I spent about $1K on everything, and now pretty much every bit of it can be replaced (although each LED is rated for thousnds of hours use).  So after that outlay, my upkeep is bare minimum (bulbs for my last setup could be $300 every few months). 

I also grabbed the 'dual fan kit' which allows you to just plug in normal computer case fans, and they even had a speed control.  I turned it down until I could feel the heat on the heatsink.  The LED's run hot enough to loosed the solder if you don't run fans (found that out the annoyingly hard way).
Click to expand...

Im running a 50/50 mix of T5 and LED on the frag tank.  The light is working awesome.  For my LED I used 24 LED (16 Royal Blue and 8 Cool White) on 48" worth of 1" aluminum heatsink.  Non dimmable.....running fans.  The color is 20kish on just the LED.....looks pretty good.  I really like the royal blue LED for pop.  Be careful of salt spray ruining the LEDs....I was running 8 royal blue with a 250w MH with no glass protecting the LEDs and they stoped working....so I need to see if I can salvage any of them.  The new setup has a 3mm glass over the LEDs.

What is the mix of blue and white Glen?
[/quote]


There's a few things that can go wrong with the royal blues.  Some of the drivers can overdrive them and burn them out, and they are easy to short for some reason and I think they are more temperamental about cooling.  If you have the lenses on them, water shouldn't be an issue at all. 

I've split them -almost- 50/50, but I also did a strip of 12 blues on a separate driver as an actinic style strip.  You can test each LED with 2 AA's in a battery holder since they run on 3W.  I have the tester thing we could check them out. 
 
Z

Zakk

Guest
teebone110 link said:
Hey Zakk, what do you say about making me a strip of Royal Blue LEDs for my 90G?

I know you want to ;)
Click to expand...

I can tell you what to order, and I likely work for beer :)
 
teebone110

teebone110

Distinguished Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2011
Location
London, Ontario
Website
www.thefragtank.ca
Zakk link said:
[quote author=teebone110 link=topic=1240.msg9015#msg9015 date=1313639990]
Hey Zakk, what do you say about making me a strip of Royal Blue LEDs for my 90G?

I know you want to ;)
Click to expand...

I can tell you what to order, and I likely work for beer :)
[/quote]

Deal!

Tell me what and where and I can supervise!!
 
P

phi delt reefer

Guest
for all you soldering-challenged folk;


http://www.modularled.ca/


Canadian company that sells leds mounted on circuts boards that you just plug together - no soldering required. Cost of leds is the same as buying them on 'raw' and they are Crees (for you brand whores  ;))

equivelent.jpg
 
Z

Zakk

Guest
phi delt reefer link said:
for all you soldering-challenged folk;


http://www.modularled.ca/


Canadian company that sells leds mounted on circuts boards that you just plug together - no soldering required. Cost of leds is the same as buying them on 'raw' and they are Crees (for you brand whores  ;))

equivelent.jpg
Click to expand...

After using the cree - star LED's I kind of wonder how the circuit board ones would hold up, since the ones on the star heatsinks get hot enough to loosen the solder if they are not attached to a heatsink.  Like, REALLY hot  :eek:
 
P

phi delt reefer

Guest
you have to mount those circuit boards to a heat sink as well so they should be fine.
 
Z

Zakk

Guest
phi delt reefer link said:
you have to mount those circuit boards to a heat sink as well so they should be fine.
Click to expand...

Ah, okay, that makes more sense, man those things get toasty.  ;D
 
M

martinmcnally

Guest
Hi guys, thats exactly correct they need to be mounted on heatsinks. We worked with some engineers are Cree to design the best possible thermal transfer pad for the printed circuit boards. They are as close to the metal core stars as possible and the difference in running temperature when attached to a heatsinks is very small approximately 3 degrees Celsius. Well within the safe operating range :)

Martin
 
P

phi delt reefer

Guest
just buy one led at a time...

tell everyone you are slowly acclimating the tank to the light  ;D or that its just a really long sunrise program
 
Z

Zakk

Guest
Thanks.  It's tough to get really interesting shots because everything is back to frags and a lot of coralline.  Once they start to flesh in, and I get a little more selective in the types/colours that are in there, it should really look like something.  ;D
 
S

SantaMonicaHelp

Guest
What do you mean by "flesh in"? Do you mean coloration?
 
Z

Zakk

Guest
I mean go from tiny frags to crazy branching monsters.  The colour definitely does improve (usually) as they mature though. 
 
S

SantaMonicaHelp

Guest
Aww...That's nice. I wish we could have a big frag shelf...
 
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