Victoss' LED Build

[Victoss]

Upgraded the tank so I needed to upgrade my LEDs and look at that, they decided to upgrade themselves from the black to the gold version 

Since I never made a build thread here for the original fixture I'm gonna sum it up real quick, some of you may have seen this if you ever visited the KWAS forums.

Here's the original fixture:
*Click on any small image to see a larger version at photobucket

The kit is a 48 LED DIY Dimmable kit with two 6" x 20" black anodized heat sinks from RapidLED.

There is 20 Royal blue, 8 Neutral white, 8 Violet UV, 4 Blue, 4 Deep red and 4 cyan LEDs.

Driver 1: 12 RB @1300 mA
Driver 2: 8 NW + 4 RB @1300 mA
Driver 3: 8 UV + 4 RB @600 mA
Driver 4: 4 B + 4 R + 4 Cyan @600 mA

Single clustersAll on:   White:   Blue:   UV:   RGB:

FTS All on:   White:   Blue:   UV:   RGB:

*All drivers but blue have more than 1 colour


And a few other shots to suit your fancy:

                   


Now on to the NEW:

For this upgrade I bought the 36 LED DIY Dimmable kit, again from RapidLED.

There is 24 RB, 8 Violet UV and 4 Neutral White LEDs.

Driver 5: 12 RB @1300 mA
Driver 6: 12 RB @1300 mA
Driver 7: 8 UV + 4 NW @600 mA

Blue:   Blue again:   White and UV:

(I swear I didn't just flip the blue pictures  ;D)

Here's what one side of all the new LEDs look like:

And here's 2 pictures will all (new and old) on:

And one with all the wiring and mounted in the canopy:

Ok that's it, I swear, no more pictures today ;D
But don't worry, I'll have some FTS's when I get my tank 'picture ready' soon.  >

 

[Poseidon]

looking good!

 

[curiousphil]

Looks great

Funny timing, I'm also doing some LED upgrades right now!

 

[Victoss]

Looks great

Funny timing, I'm also doing some LED upgrades right now!

Thanks 
Saw your new layout on your build thread, looks good. Did you find it was too white with all the Ocean Coral Whites or did yo notice any disco from it's colours? Like the idea of them on the same star.

 

[curiousphil]

Didn't really get any disco effect, no.  They blend pretty nicely.  But ya overall my tank was a bit too white for my liking, I'm trying to tip it more into the blue part of the spectrum.  Plus I read that the reds can actually be harmful! As that light is mostly filtered out in the first 5ft of ocean water, corals aren't adapted to receiving it.  But with a modest amount of the OCW stars dimmed down you get a nice effect where it brings out colours that normally get washed out by blue - especially on the fish.

 

[Victoss]

Ya I've notice that with the few reds I have, really help with certain colours and even brings out colours on fish. Reds are what algae love but with moderation a few shouldn't do much at all. As for corals, you gotta remember there are parts of the reef that are very close if not above the water during low tides.

 

[Boga]

Nice build Victoss. What is the purpose of having the LED's grouped in six clusters and not distributed over the entire area?

 

[Victoss]

Originally it was in 4 clusters and the centres have a cyan and red LED, trying to avoid any spotlighting or disco I decided they should be close together so they would mix well. When you mix red, green and blue in theory you should get white, in my case it ended up an aqua green colour which was fine because it gets covered up by all the blue anyways. This is why when full spectrum lights use these weird colours generally the red and green will be right beside each other or close to it. I'm glad to say I never got any red or green spotlighting or disco because of this.

When I upgraded them the spacing I had between the 4 clusters was equal to the length of a cluster, so the new ones I added fit perfectly in while looking like they were originally part of the plan. Whit this many LEDs I probably could of got away with the square distributed layout people generally use when doing LEDs but this was an upgrade so I wasn't going to remove what I already have. I wouldn't really call them clusters anymore as it's more just like a diamond pattern now. 

 

[Boga]

Thanks. Indeed, in my build I have some red/green "shadows" because of spacings. I will revisit mine and get them closer or eliminate them in the favor of UV's.