A little progress on the Edge

A while back my now wife gave me a Fluval Edge for Christmas that I always wanted to turn into a saltwater tank. Since the beginning I started getting an LED setup ready for when I filled it up.

So I made some cheap DIY LED drivers and used 4 cool white crees and 2 MR11 blue lamps

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With the way I had the lights wired I was only putting about 350ma to the lights and the blues were fairly dim to begin with.

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I filled up the tank anyway and within the first month one of the driver's fried the white lights and the saltwater spray corroded the MR11s until none of them lit so in the meantime I just slapped on one of my CF combos over the top and it had been that way for the past 5 months :sad2:


My daughter is now a month old now and things around the house are starting to settle down so I FINALLY placed an order with rapidled and ledsupply and everything came in just in time for father's day! :D

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I ordered a 4.5" x 9" heatsink
4 x Cree Royal Blue XP-E leds
Laptop power supply which I already took apart
2 x 1000mA Buckpucks with adjustable pot to control color temp
I'm re-using the 4 XR-E cool white lamps since they have less than a month's use


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The layout I chose

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Instead of drilling and tapping like I did with the first setup I am just going to use some Berquist thermal adhesive pads which I've heard good things about. Tomorrow I go to Radio Shack after work to pick up a project box and some cat5 cable. Just thought I'd breathe a little life into the forum. I'll take a picture of the tank tomorrow with a real camera instead of my cell phone :)

Stay tuned!
 
Yeah I'm going to add a plate to cover the wiring and a clear splash shield, just need to bring my drill press from my dads house
 
Had a little bit of fun tonight

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I ordered a set of knobs tonight, should be here before the end of the week i hope.

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I decided to go with RCA jacks for the LED outputs. Dead easy to solder and I can use commercially made cables to make it look nicer.

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Looks like the laptop charger worked out allright. I'm able to re-use the power cord without having to hack it up and it will easily handle the 8 LEDs
 
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