Father and Son Project. LED's from Aquastyle and heat sinks from Steve's

TomToro

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DIY LED project. 24 x 3w and 40 x 3w


The Father/Son LED DIY weekend starts tomorrow. I have to get myself an array of tools (read Evil's Thread) from Home Depot.

1st up is for my son's 28g biocube. 24x3w LED on a 7x11" heatsink.

2nd up is for me and it's a 40x3w LED (30x453nm + 10x420nm) on a 60" tubular heat sink.

2 fans for the 24 and 1 percussion fan for the 40.

I bought most of the parts from Aquastyle. I've heard their drivers are lousy but for the money, I can swap out the drivers if I need to and still be ahead.

The only problem is the instructions. Vague at best. Does anybody have a link to generic directions/advice/cautions that I can use for my project?

I have some simple questions like:

-how far apart do the LED's need to be spaced? Can they be 1" apart or 2" apart, what's too close,what am I trying to achieve/avoid, etc.

-How can I wire the fans so they go on with the fixture instead of using their own plugs

-Proper soldering technique for the LED's. I could see too much heat damaging the led's

-Any tricks of the trade that would make the installation easier

-Cautions (DON'T DO THIS!)

Thanks for any help,
Tom
 

revhtree

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Tom looking forward to this!
 

XavierZ06

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First off, aquastyles kits are fine. I have 2 of them and they both work just as well as my Cree setup.

The space in between leds depends on the cooling you will be running. I spaced 14 leds over a 44" span. All evenly spaced. I also rigged up 7 along an 8" heatsibk for my 8g biocube. Both run fine. so whatever you feel would work for your light spacing. The fans should keep you cool any way you do it.


As For soldering I would recomment tinning the stars and wire first, it makes the installation when they are on the heatsink cake lol. Just touch the side of the tip of the soldering gun to the square on the star and the solder right to the tip for like half a second to put just a "bubble" on top of the star. I have never soldered anything and followed that method from another thread and didn't damage anything on my 72 led build for my 75 gallon.

I'm on my phone so I forgot the other questions lol but those I know I could answer for you :)

Its definitely not as hard as people make it seem. Especially with a kit like this. So do Not overthink it, and Just relax and have fun :) remember to get the polarities right or your going to be going back over Everything haha
 

mjm7757

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Ninjaskillzs, do you have a build thread for your fixture? I'm thinking about doing something similar for my 75.
 

XavierZ06

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I kinda did at first but then didnt really update it lol... If you have questions feel free to PM me i can answer them to the best of my ability
 

Chameleon

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First off, aquastyles kits are fine. I have 2 of them and they both work just as well as my Cree setup.

The space in between leds depends on the cooling you will be running. I spaced 14 leds over a 44" span. All evenly spaced. I also rigged up 7 along an 8" heatsibk for my 8g biocube. Both run fine. so whatever you feel would work for your light spacing. The fans should keep you cool any way you do it.


As For soldering I would recomment tinning the stars and wire first, it makes the installation when they are on the heatsink cake lol. Just touch the side of the tip of the soldering gun to the square on the star and the solder right to the tip for like half a second to put just a "bubble" on top of the star. I have never soldered anything and followed that method from another thread and didn't damage anything on my 72 led build for my 75 gallon.

I'm on my phone so I forgot the other questions lol but those I know I could answer for you :)

Its definitely not as hard as people make it seem. Especially with a kit like this. So do Not overthink it, and Just relax and have fun :) remember to get the polarities right or your going to be going back over Everything haha

+1 I used aquastyle and they seemed very good for the price. If you have any questions just shoot an email through their site and they will respond. They sent me a good overview of how to do the driver and such by email, but its also in pics on their site.
 

Chameleon

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40 leds on a 60'' tube sink may get hot though. I have 13 on 36'' 1'' aluminum tubes and it can get hot if run on full power.
 
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TomToro

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All done. Took about 5 hours of soldering, cutting and thinking. Son did most of the thinking. Thanks to Ninjaskillz for the help, especially the tinning process. Made the soldering easy. Followed some youtube how to videos too. The basement is a disaster area, but both are done and ready for installation. I decided to add an additional foot of heat sink to house all the LED's (took your advice to heart, Chameleon). The percussion fan works great and puts out tons more than any small muffin fan I've seen. Son's fixture fit perfectly in his biocube hood. He put in 4 muffin fans and opened up some more vent holes for ventilation. Very clean job and can't wait to see it on his setup. More light than he needs, but he has two dimmers. He also put two 3w UV led's on another dimmer and transformer for his moonlights. We used his over one section of my 240 and it lit up at least a 4th of it (2') all the way to the bottom with no problem. My 6' led worked well on my 135 and the violets really hd the corals. Tomorrow I have to come up with a mounting system and some sort of lense to protect the fixture. Here are a couple of pics after we were done.
LEDDIY018.jpg

LEDDIY017.jpg


Both are dimmed down to almost zero because it washed out the camera when on full and directly at the optics.
 

ReeferEric

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Both look great, I really wanted to do LEDs but the ATI T5 fixture I'm getting was too good to say no. Those drivers are tiny! Maybe I'll integrated some LEDs later.
 
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TomToro

TomToro

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Thanks Eric. Here's a quick pic with the new LED supplimental lighting and the 3x175w MH Iwasakis.
NewpicsofLEDspstank005.jpg
 

gunguy05

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Any updates on this? I am looking to do a BC29 with the aquastyle kit and am just doing all of my research and looking for input from those that have don'e similar installs.

How is the heat, any issues there?

What about the color, are you happy with it?

Is there anything that you would have done different when installing the kit?

Thanks,
Brian
 

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