Diy led reef light

[Hussam]

Hi
I try to diy reef LED light
I read a lot of information about this
So
Can I created light by
Royal blue 100w led. x 2
20000k 100w led x2
6500k 100w led. x1
I shoes this led to sesy install in heatsink cpu for computer

Or
XP_E 3w x40
Xp_g 3w x10
3w royal blue x40
My tank size
100c. X. 65c deep x 50 c
Any idea my friend

 

[Hussam]

Hi
I try to diy reef LED light
I reed a lot of information about this
So
Can I created light by
Royal blue 100w led. x 2
20000k 100w led x2
6500k 100w led. x1
I shoes this led to sesy install in heatsink cpu for computer

Or
XP_E 3w x40
Xp_g 3w x10
3w royal blue x40
My tank size
100c. X. 65c deep x 50 c
Any idea my friend

 

[Fishinbob]

Hi
I try to diy reef LED light
I read a lot of information about this
So
Can I created light by
Royal blue 100w led. x 2
20000k 100w led x2
6500k 100w led. x1
I shoes this led to sesy install in heatsink cpu for computer

Or
XP_E 3w x40
Xp_g 3w x10
3w royal blue x40
My tank size
100c. X. 65c deep x 50 c
Any idea my friend

What size tank are you building it for?
The larger leds (100w) will create spot light effect.
Many smaller leds will blend better and give you better color blending and reduce shadows.
Some led builders will combine smaller lights in clusters to create a larger light source.

Here is my build, it can be very time consuming but very rewarding also.

 

[bblumberg]

Hi
I try to diy reef LED light
I read a lot of information about this
So
Can I created light by
Royal blue 100w led. x 2
20000k 100w led x2
6500k 100w led. x1
I shoes this led to sesy install in heatsink cpu for computer

Or
XP_E 3w x40
Xp_g 3w x10
3w royal blue x40
My tank size
100c. X. 65c deep x 50 c
Any idea my friend

That is a LOT of light for an 85g tank. I, myself would lose the 20K led and replace with 5K neutral white and also add some hyperviolet (430 nm). I find that 3-4x more blue than white gives a good color balance. Otherwise, you will probably not run your whites as high as blues.

I have messed around with individual LEDs, a cheap Chinese COB LED (so called "Dream Chip") and high quality COB LEDs (BlueAcro Acrostar 20K Blue Pro). I am most happy with a combination of T5 and the BlueAcro chips. You need to consider what type of drivers you want to use (I like Meanwell LDD-H), power supply (I like the high-efficiency Meanwell HLG series) and how you will control the lights. I have a Bluefish mini on this tank and a Typhoon controller on my other DIY individual LED light. 2 of the 3 DreamChips have failed white channels already and they are in my junk box.

Here is an example of how my 150g looks at midday settings about 6 months ago. The color is fairly accurate. I am going to increase the number of BlueAcro chips from 3 to 6 and add some neutral white to tweak the spectrum a bit and spread out the lights.

Bruce

 

[Hussam]

What size tank are you building it for?
The larger leds (100w) will create spot light effect.
Many smaller leds will blend better and give you better color blending and reduce shadows.
Some led builders will combine smaller lights in clusters to create a larger light source.

Here is my build, it can be very time consuming but very rewarding also.

Thanks my friend

 

[Hussam]

That is a LOT of light for an 85g tank. I, myself would lose the 20K led and replace with 5K neutral white and also add some hyperviolet (430 nm). I find that 3-4x more blue than white gives a good color balance. Otherwise, you will probably not run your whites as high as blues.

I have messed around with individual LEDs, a cheap Chinese COB LED (so called "Dream Chip") and high quality COB LEDs (BlueAcro Acrostar 20K Blue Pro). I am most happy with a combination of T5 and the BlueAcro chips. You need to consider what type of drivers you want to use (I like Meanwell LDD-H), power supply (I like the high-efficiency Meanwell HLG series) and how you will control the lights. I have a Bluefish mini on this tank and a Typhoon controller on my other DIY individual LED light. 2 of the 3 DreamChips have failed white channels already and they are in my junk box.

Here is an example of how my 150g looks at midday settings about 6 months ago. The color is fairly accurate. I am going to increase the number of BlueAcro chips from 3 to 6 and add some neutral white to tweak the spectrum a bit and spread out the lights.

Bruce

can I use 10w x 6 led

Because it is to. easy install

What color and k

Should be use

And

If I use small led w3 can I use aluminum and fan for cooler led . Because the heatsink expensive in Charge Because its heavy

And what color and types and k should be use

 

[Hussam]

What size tank are you building it for?
The larger leds (100w) will create spot light effect.
Many smaller leds will blend better and give you better color blending and reduce shadows.
Some led builders will combine smaller lights in clusters to create a larger light source.

Here is my build, it can be very time consuming but very rewarding also.

My tank size
40 x 26 h x20 inch
What color and k and type you use

 

[Fishinbob]

My tank size
40 x 26 h x20 inch
What color and k and type you use

Sorry didn't see you posted sizing before. Mostly cree leds 3w

14 royal blue 70%
8 blue , 4 cyan 45%
8,uv/violet, 4 royal blue 60%
2Green, 2red,2 lime,2 warm white 35%
4 cool white , 4 neutral white 30%

Each ran on vdm off Neptune apex. Tried to cluster for better color blending but not as much coverage.
Run 80 deg optics on rb and if all others no optics.

 

[Hussam]

And thanks for all this information

 

[Hussam]

Sorry didn't see you posted sizing before. Mostly cree leds 3w

14 royal blue 70%
8 blue , 4 cyan 45%
8,uv/violet, 4 royal blue 60%
2Green, 2red,2 lime,2 warm white 35%
4 cool white , 4 neutral white 30%

Each ran on vdm off Neptune apex. Tried to cluster for better color blending but not as much coverage.
Run 80 deg optics on rb and if all others no optics.

Perfect thanks

 

[Fishinbob]

And square aluminum or u channel is s good alternative. Limits design but will cool

 

[bblumberg]

can I use 10w x 6 led

Because it is to. easy install

What color and k

Should be use

And

If I use small led w3 can I use aluminum and fan for cooler led . Because the heatsink expensive in Charge Because its heavy

And what color and types and k should be use

This is a very subjective and personal issue. If you have a fair amount of royal blue and neutral to cool white, the lights will grow corals. Other colors UV/violet (400-420nm), hyperviolet (430 nm), blue (475-485 nm), cyan (496-505 nm), lime (570 nm) help to bring out specific colors and increase growth of some corals. Some people (and vendors) argue for high K white (15000-20000K) but I think that these days, many are coming back to a mixture of cool white (6500K) and neutral white (~5000K).

I built my first LED from a RapidLED kit that had 12 royal blue and 12 cool white to go on a 24g Nanocube with failed lights. This worked well enough, but the corals did not pop and I found that the blue channel needed to be run 3x higher than the whites to please my eye. This used dimmable drivers controlled by a manual dimmer switch. Not ideal, but functional.

My 2nd build over a 30" deep 75g corner tank the following mix (4 x 400 nm semi-LED, 4 x 410-420 nm semi LED, 4 x 420-430 NM semi LED, 9 x Luxeon ES 440-465 nm royal blue, 18 Cree XT-E 450-465 nm royal blue, 9 Cree XP-G2 6000k neutral white, 2 Cree XP-E Photo red (650-670 nm) and 2 Cree XP-E green (520-535 nm) all put on a 20" heat sink from RapidLED with a 4 channel Storm controller. This worked, but grew some more algae than I liked. Since then I have switched out the reds for XP-E blues, the greens for lime and half of the cool whites with neutral white. I like this better. This tank is in a rebuild/rescape phase but corals and anemones are doing well. These use 60 degree optics and some "disco ball" effects can be seen on the sand bed and rocks, but not so bad.

My 3rd build for a 150g (60 x 24 x 24) planned to use the "Dream Chip" that was written about a lot on another forum in a long thread. I won't bore you with all of the headaches I encountered, in part due to my own designs and partly due to defective chips. I decided to replace these with BlueAcro Acrostar 20K Blue Pro pucks with reflectors and diffusers on a 48" Makers heat sink, and flanked this by 2 x 80W T5 retrofits on either side. I like this quite a bit and it was very easy to install, wire, etc. It is a bit too blue/purple for my taste when only the LEDs are on and the light is not spread out enough, but the light mixing is quite good and there is no disco effect. I bought 3 more of these chips and 4 x LumiLeds neutral white COB LEDs that I will install one of these days. The T5s draw at least double the current of the LEDs as they are currently set.

You should consider whether you want one large heat sink or several small ones that might be more available and less costly. The Makers heat sinks are very nice, but so are the ones that RapidLED sells (and no doubt others). Fans are built in. Whether you use small 10 or 20w clusters is a matter of choice. You can buy these fairly cheaply on the internet from Chinese vendors. Overall, your most cost-effective option is probably to buy a couple of 165w "black box" LED units but this will not give you the quality or satisfaction of selecting chips yourself and assembling.

 

[TDF]

Did you have to build the plastic fixture ?

 

[bblumberg]

Did you have to build the plastic fixture ?

If you were asking me, no. The fixture is the heat sink, which is aluminum.

 

[TDF]

If you were asking me, no. The fixture is the heat sink, which is aluminum.

Thank you

 

[Greef_in_the_Reef]

What size tank are you building it for?
The larger leds (100w) will create spot light effect.
Many smaller leds will blend better and give you better color blending and reduce shadows.
Some led builders will combine smaller lights in clusters to create a larger light source.

Here is my build, it can be very time consuming but very rewarding also.

I’d like to throw my .02 cents in. Just some background I have a degree in computers and electronics engineering. I would highly suggest using 3w led’s vs any other type. Reason being efficiency and power consumption, right now, 3w give you the best of both worlds.

 

[User1]

I decided to replace these with BlueAcro Acrostar 20K Blue Pro pucks with reflectors and diffusers on a 48" Makers heat sink

Interesting choice. I also went with the multi-channel from Blue Acro. Will be running four of them over my 240 Gallon that is 30" tall x 30" deep and 54" wide. I will be moving another pair of Luxeon based chips that RapidLED used to make, the Borealis multi-channel chip, which will all be controlled by my Apex. I may order another pair of the Acrostars if I don't think I have enough light. So far though I seem to get good penetration to the bottom of the tank. I do not want to run them at full power but rather 50 - 75% so we'll see if I need more or not.

Only thing using his drivers you need the pwm boards from Steve's LED's to connect/control from Apex controllers. I'm currently controlling my Borealis's using my ReefAngel.

 

[bblumberg]

Interesting choice. I also went with the multi-channel from Blue Acro. Will be running four of them over my 240 Gallon that is 30" tall x 30" deep and 54" wide. I will be moving another pair of Luxeon based chips that RapidLED used to make, the Borealis multi-channel chip, which will all be controlled by my Apex. I may order another pair of the Acrostars if I don't think I have enough light. So far though I seem to get good penetration to the bottom of the tank. I do not want to run them at full power but rather 50 - 75% so we'll see if I need more or not.

Only thing using his drivers you need the pwm boards from Steve's LED's to connect/control from Apex controllers. I'm currently controlling my Borealis's using my ReefAngel.

I upgraded mine to 6 x Acrostar 20K blue pro and added 4 x Lumi-Leds 4500K whites. Unfortunately, my wife does not like the white added in so those remain off. I think that the illumination is much more even this way, but I am only running the chips at 35% at midday. I started to creep them up by 1% every few days and reached a point where the tips of my acros started to bleach so I went back to 35%. I am using two O2surplus 6-up LDD boards with 3 BlueAcro and 2 LumiLEDs COBs on each. My original plan was to control these with the apex using a Steve's LEDs 0-10v to PWM converter, but had a hard time getting that to work. I didn't have the patience to figure this out and changed to a Bluefish mini controller and all is well.

Bruce

 

[User1]

I upgraded mine to 6 x Acrostar 20K blue pro and added 4 x Lumi-Leds 4500K whites. Unfortunately, my wife does not like the white added in so those remain off. I think that the illumination is much more even this way, but I am only running the chips at 35% at midday. I started to creep them up by 1% every few days and reached a point where the tips of my acros started to bleach so I went back to 35%. I am using two O2surplus 6-up LDD boards with 3 BlueAcro and 2 LumiLEDs COBs on each. My original plan was to control these with the apex using a Steve's LEDs 0-10v to PWM converter, but had a hard time getting that to work. I didn't have the patience to figure this out and changed to a Bluefish mini controller and all is well.

Bruce

Thanks for the information. I'm similar although stayed with Blue Acro's drivers. You mentioned issues with Steve's converter though, huh? That was my plan but maybe I need a plan B? I do have a reef angel controller that is managing my current LED's (Borealis multi-channel chips) with PWM perfectly fine. I'd like to use the Apex though for a complete ecosystem.

You run Bluefish mini and Apex?

 

[bblumberg]

I can't say for certain that there were issues with the Steve's converters. Rather I could not get them to work in a few hours of messing around either using Apex cables or DIY cables from ethernet cables. I expect that with enough effort, I could have made it work so don't take this as a negative about the Steve's converter. I didn't have enough time to figure this out and just decided to take the lazy way out and go with the Bluefish mini that plugs directly into the O2surplus board. The Bluefish mini has its own issues, but once I got it Blinked up, has been flawless.

The only thing that the Apex controls on this light is the power to the LED fixture (ON/OFF, set to always on). Bluefish is programmed via its WiFI app.

Bruce