The Modified Black Box Thread

[AbjectMaelstroM]

Yah you made it look easy!! Yours had a 3 year warranty? I thought mine only had 1?..the thing thats aggravating is I paid $210 a piece, or $420 for 2 vipar 300w lights that I thought were engineered specifically with par and spectrum for reef tanks!!! Now to have to reconfigure them doesnt seem right! thats gonna be more cost! I might not have bought them had I known this...

To give them credit where it's due, they work just fine for reefs, both par and spectrum wise. Now, are you going to be maxing out both channels? Probably not. But even on radions, some channels are greatly underused such as the white, green, and red. Unfortunately, by spending only 200 per fixture vs 850, I think it's not realistic to expect the same features. One of the sacrifices is that there are only two channels and all the LEDs that are underused on most other lights happen to on the same channel.

You absolutely don't have to do anything to your lights. You probably just won't be using majority of the white channel depending on how blue you like it. Majority of users seem to run their white channels between 1 and 30%. The only reason to mod them, at least for me, was so that I could squeeze more juice out of the white channel.

Should hold me over until I'm ready to drop $$ on "premium" lights. Right now there's no need as I only have softies/Lps.

 

[Nicholas Dushynsky]

I'm in the same boat I only have lps really plus some zoas, I fancied having a bluer look to the tank with a little violet in there, I don't know what levels I'm going to settle on with my new layout, I'm going to give it time and if the colour really bugs me I'll adjust it and change less at a later date.
Do people remove the reds and greens at all?

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

Just opened up my viparspectra that's been over my tank for the last 4-5 months and saw this... Both 395nm UVs I put on when I first got the light. Both are showing burnin on their lenses. Basically, these LEDs and cheap and I will be replacing them with etishr RB or violet.

 

[Nicholas Dushynsky]

Just opened up my viparspectra that's been over my tank for the last 4-5 months and saw this... Both 395nm UVs I put on when I first got the light. Both are showing burnin on their lenses. Basically, these LEDs and cheap and I will be replacing them with etishr RB or violet.

This is the reason I didn't go below 400 from what I had read the uv don't last long,the violets I got say they are 410-420k.

And the blues I bought say 440-450k

 

[Nicholas Dushynsky]

This is my tank now with the new led layout.

Just channel 1.

Just channel 2.

Both channels ch1 at 45% ch2 5%.

I will draw the layout later.

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

So did a quick par comparison on lens vs no lens.... Holy cow. Went from aprox 550 at the surface to about 200. On the rock where my zoas are I was getting 225ish now I get 70.

I guess lenses stay on.

 

[Nicholas Dushynsky]

So did a quick par comparison on lens vs no lens.... Holy cow. Went from aprox 550 at the surface to about 200. On the rock where my zoas are I was getting 225ish now I get 70.

I guess lenses stay on.

That is a big drop off, I'm running mine at the moment with no lenses so I my thinking is to put lenses back on (if they still fit now I've changed it). But I was under the belief that you only lose 20% max when you remove lenses. I assume this is dependant on mounting height as well as once removed ,the light wasted goes sideways into the room not down in the tank.

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

That is a big drop off, I'm running mine at the moment with no lenses so I my thinking is to put lenses back on (if they still fit now I've changed it). But I was under the belief that you only lose 20% max when you remove lenses. I assume this is dependant on mounting height as well as once removed ,the light wasted goes sideways into the room not down in the tank.

Yeah I'm not sure of others' experience, but I'm going from numbers I'm getting with the apogee Sq-420. Mine are mounted 10 off the waterline.

Just put lenses back on and I'm back to my previous levels, give or take 5-10 par depending on which way sensor is pointing.

I left the lenses off of green and reds.

 

[Nicholas Dushynsky]

Having never used a par meter I assume the slightest of angle or any water movement would effect the readings. Also I assume that you left lenses off the red and green so not to get the light showing I the sand or rocks, plus to reduce the par on those colours.

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

Having never used a par meter I assume the slightest of angle or any water movement would effect the readings. Also I assume that you left lenses off the red and green so not to get the light showing I the sand or rocks, plus to reduce the par on those colours.

Orientation and water movement does effect readings, but unless you're doing some crazy angles you will be within 5-15 par.

Yeah I left the lenses of green and red to reduce PUR and reduce the shimmer/disco from those colors.

 

[Nicholas Dushynsky]

Orientation and water movement does effect readings, but unless you're doing some crazy angles you will be within 5-15 par.

Yeah I left the lenses of green and red to reduce PUR and reduce the shimmer/disco from those colors.

Cool, I was going to put lenses back on tomorrow or in a while, it is just easier to see the leds and how my soldering is holding up while running them with them removed. It's only the first time using it with the new leds for a full day. I have only ran it lensless for a week previously about a year ago and I didn't like the spill into the room. I only removed them to figure out what leds I needed to get so while I had the light disassembled I took the lot off.

 

[Billsreef1]

Don't get me wrong these lights are good at growing corals I had grown sps with them so you don't need to reconfigure them. It's just alot if people dont use much white, I have used them at 80 blue and 20 white growing sps fine. Someone on the thread I startedhttps://www.reef2reef.com/threads/viparspectra-165watt-anyone-using-these.317612/ uses them at 100% on both channels. This was my tank before I lost the sps due to zero phosphates and nitrates. This was it when I started

I'm looking at it thinking I've had the light since Jan 2017 its over 3 years old now and It looks too yellow for my liking and I want a different look and it can do with a freshen up, plus once I think about doing something I do as much research as I can and eventually do it.
I'm sure the leds over time must change/degrade.

I paid £89 delivered back then and the seller on amazon I bought it from gave a 3 yr warranty, but now to replace it the cheapest I can find it is £139 for a new one.
I like the look of the g5 blue but the price is stupid and alot more than what I'm willing to pay. So I went with just modding what I have to make a poor man's version of one (not really). Even if I broke this one beyond repair and bought a new one it is still cheaper than 1 radion so why not. I started a thread about the viparspectra on here asking if people use them and at what settings and most people who responded used them at 100 blue and 1 white or very little, then supplemented with extra blue led strips or t5. Please don't think you have to change your lights just because others have. They work fine out the box to grow corals, I feel you won't run very high white. I run just channel 1 for 4 hrs on it's own per day 2 at the beginning and 2 at the end.

Wow!! Thanks for all the good info!!! Really helps! And that link to the new thread is awesome....it will take me awhile to go through it...your tank looks good! Yah the price of those g5 is crazy...who can afford those? Lol...i have the 300w vipar and gives me about 250-275 par at top of rocks for sps at 28 blue and 1 white setting. Can I ask what you run your nitrate and phosphate now? I dosed nopox and got it too low like you but quit and now its about 1-2 nitrate and .05 phosphate....

 

[Billsreef1]

To give them credit where it's due, they work just fine for reefs, both par and spectrum wise. Now, are you going to be maxing out both channels? Probably not. But even on radions, some channels are greatly underused such as the white, green, and red. Unfortunately, by spending only 200 per fixture vs 850, I think it's not realistic to expect the same features. One of the sacrifices is that there are only two channels and all the LEDs that are underused on most other lights happen to on the same channel.

You absolutely don't have to do anything to your lights. You probably just won't be using majority of the white channel depending on how blue you like it. Majority of users seem to run their white channels between 1 and 30%. The only reason to mod them, at least for me, was so that I could squeeze more juice out of the white channel.

Should hold me over until I'm ready to drop $$ on "premium" lights. Right now there's no need as I only have softies/Lps.

Thank you for the reply. You are spot on!!

 

[Nicholas Dushynsky]

Wow!! Thanks for all the good info!!! Really helps! And that link to the new thread is awesome....it will take me awhile to go through it...your tank looks good! Yah the price of those g5 is crazy...who can afford those? Lol...i have the 300w vipar and gives me about 250-275 par at top of rocks for sps at 28 blue and 1 white setting. Can I ask what you run your nitrate and phosphate now? I dosed nopox and got it too low like you but quit and now its about 1-2 nitrate and .05 phosphate....

I'm dosing phosphates daily and it sits at 0.03 and nitrates around 15ish I only have 3 fish so not much fish waste for corals. I fitted the lenses back on yesterday and turned the blue back to 35 so not to shock them, without lenses I ran them 60

 

[Nicholas Dushynsky]

I finally drew up my layout.

 

[Reverend Turtle]

Any updates? I'm rebuilding some old Evergrow D120 boxes, plan to replace most of the diodes, and have new 80 watt 700ma drivers coming. Trying to squeeze as much light out of them as I can.
My question if anyone knows, is if I add additional heatsinks between the board and fans, will this help extend the life of the LED's themselves? Also, would two 12"×1"×½" heatsinks per board work, or should a go with something closer to the size of the board?
TIA!

 

[Heabel7]

Any updates? I'm rebuilding some old Evergrow D120 boxes, plan to replace most of the diodes, and have new 80 watt 700ma drivers coming. Trying to squeeze as much light out of them as I can.
My question if anyone knows, is if I add additional heatsinks between the board and fans, will this help extend the life of the LED's themselves? Also, would two 12"×1"×½" heatsinks per board work, or should a go with something closer to the size of the board?
TIA!

Everything helps. But the more you get in there the better. Plus you could upgrade the fans to more CFM with less noise. It also depends on the black box and how it is configured on the internals the amount and size of heat sink you can get in there. They are all NOT the same. From diodes, spectrum, drivers, fans, lenses, internal latout, sealing, etc, etc .All different. Basically my WiFi evergrow will be different then yours in most cases.

 

[blasterman]

I quick note here that I set up a 20L and moved one of my Mars Aquas over to it. Obviously the default optics won't work, but I removed them entirely and quite honestly the coverage is amazing and rivals T5. This only brings my ire back to the stupid optics that ship with black boxes and they should be wide angle. They are the same price, so it doesn't make sense why black boxes ship with those absurd 30-45degree optics when 65's are just as available. I'm probably losing 30% or more of my light to spill being bare, but I'm too busy to reoptic the thing and wait a month for optics to ship from china.

The other issue is I have heavy SPS growth, and even 4" above the water on a 20 long I'm having to crank both channels near max with bare LEDs to get a PAR 300-400 ' ish in the middle. This is forcing me to balance my channels even more since another achilles heel of Black boxes is cranked up to max they often have bad color balance.

I really don't get the layouts you guys are using. My layout is one entire channel is a mix of 450 and 460nm and the other channel is entirely blue with 4 warm whites and two cool whites. It's just a tad red, so I might add a couple more cool whites, but that's still a very small percentage of non blue LEDs to common deep blue color balance. Cool white = green because a cool white LED is just a blue with some green in it.

I will test my PCB temp and report if it's too hot.

 

[JCOLE]

I quick note here that I set up a 20L and moved one of my Mars Aquas over to it. Obviously the default optics won't work, but I removed them entirely and quite honestly the coverage is amazing and rivals T5. This only brings my ire back to the stupid optics that ship with black boxes and they should be wide angle. They are the same price, so it doesn't make sense why black boxes ship with those absurd 30-45degree optics when 65's are just as available. I'm probably losing 30% or more of my light to spill being bare, but I'm too busy to reoptic the thing and wait a month for optics to ship from china.

The other issue is I have heavy SPS growth, and even 4" above the water on a 20 long I'm having to crank both channels near max with bare LEDs to get a PAR 300-400 ' ish in the middle. This is forcing me to balance my channels even more since another achilles heel of Black boxes is cranked up to max they often have bad color balance.

I really don't get the layouts you guys are using. My layout is one entire channel is a mix of 450 and 460nm and the other channel is entirely blue with 4 warm whites and two cool whites. It's just a tad red, so I might add a couple more cool whites, but that's still a very small percentage of non blue LEDs to common deep blue color balance. Cool white = green because a cool white LED is just a blue with some green in it.

I will test my PCB temp and report if it's too hot.

Got any pictures of your tank with the black boxes running?

 

[Reverend Turtle]

Everything helps. But the more you get in there the better. Plus you could upgrade the fans to more CFM with less noise. It also depends on the black box and how it is configured on the internals the amount and size of heat sink you can get in there. They are all NOT the same. From diodes, spectrum, drivers, fans, lenses, internal latout, sealing, etc, etc .All different. Basically my WiFi evergrow will be different then yours in most cases.

Have been looking at fans, but not sure how realistic some of the numbers are. Supposedly the three fans that are in the box move around 50 cfm each, but that seems incredibly high for a 3" fan. But who knows I could be wrong.
Was thinking of cutting a hole in the lid and dropping a 200mm fan in, but if it fails, my lights would overheat. Ok, that's out. Maybe mod it for 3 × 140mm fans mounted on top, instead of inside. I can make a shroud, that doubles as a mounting point as well.
Now to find some large, cheap heatsinks.

Thanks for the input. Once I get it all together I'll post the build here.