Diy led advise

[boxer]

Hi, everyone

I'm back in the hobby after about 6 months of breaking down my 29 bio cube. I purchased a marineland 60 gal cube for this upgrade and I have been planning and purchasing equipment for the last six months trying to take my time and improve on the mistakes I have made from my past 4 years of this wonderful hobby. I know that's not a long time for some but I have sure learned a lot. I'm writing this post seeking advice and opinions on the DIY Led fixture I'm currently planing for this build. I have already built a few fixtures over the years for friends and past personal tanks. I'm going to reuse the fixture I built for the 29 bio cube. It consists of a 5.9" x 16" heat sink, 12 Cree royal blues, 12 Cree cool whites, 2 ELN 60-48-P drivers set at 750ma, 1 rapid led PWM Daylight controller, and 1 4" Fan. This light over my 29 IMO was a little much. I ran this fixture at about 30% on the whites and 50% on the blues. So my idea for this overhaul is to add 12 LEDs to this heat sink. Not sure what color yet. Maybe I will just add 12 more blues. This is where I need some advice or other options I'm not aware of. I would prefer not to run another driver for the additional 12 LEDs if possible. At this point it looks impossible. The reason I don't want to use another driver is because I'm going to build a housing for the light and I'm going to recess or encase the drivers with in the fixture as long as it doesn't effect the performance and longevity of this fixture. One question would be can I possibly wire these strings in parallel to knock out one driver? If this would work I could have 18 whites on one driver and 18 blues on the other.

Thanks in advance guys and gals,

Sincerely,

James Pate

 

[TJ's Reef]

Sounds like a good plan, though you might want to take this time to add to or make more of a full spectrum fixture of it. You could add a couple of Violets and one each Red and Green/Cyan to the White circuit ( no optics on these additions for better spread) and six Blues to the Royal Blue Circuit.

Cheers, Todd

 

[Pumbooris]

I would add the extra leds to make it full spectrum as well as turn your drives up to 900ma-1000ma to get more power out of them

 

[boxer]

Thanks guys haven't though about tweeking the spectrum. I found a great total spectrum violet UV led that Ill add in the build. Also after a lil research wiring parallels strings won't be the best option for me. I'm going to "keep it simple stupid" :nono: by adding 6 royal blues, 6 cool whites, 1 total spectrum violet UV led, and 1 Mean Well LPC-35-700 constant current driver. I will add 2 whites to my already string of 12 also I will add 2 royal blues to my already blue string of 12 finally I will wire in series the remaining 4 cool whites, 4 royal blues, and total spectrum violet uv led. Powering them with the mean well LPC-35-700 constant current driver. This will still allow me with the individual dimming of my two white and blue strings that consist of 14 LEDs each.