cdrewferd's first saltwater tank

[cdrewferd]

Anyway, enough talking. Here are some of the pics I've taken so far.

First order of LEDs and heatsink.

Layout proposal, dimes are moonlights.

Then I had to figure out how to arrange the colors.

Local guy from another site was then kind enough to put my chicken scratch into CAD and come up with the measurements for me.

I then transfered those onto the heatsink.

Before any LEDs could go on I had to do the cutouts for the fans. You can see in the bottom corners on the picture that I took just a little from each corner. This will give me the clearance needed for the 60mm silentX fan. I went ahead and did the other side too so I could add another fan if needed.

Here are the RB and NW layed out.

Here are all the colors layed out and put down with the thermal adhesive.

Before I attached them to the heatsink I tried to plan out how I would wire them so everything would lay out nice. A few rotated, but overall it turned out real nice. Here are the 2 strings of RB wired.

Whites wired.

 

[cdrewferd]

For wire I ended up finding some 18-10 sprinkler wire at Home Depot. This gives me 20 wires total, even though I’m only using 14. I have some room to expand down the road if I decide to add moon lights or another fan if needed:

At this point I mounted the drivers on rails that fit in my stand:

I then wired them to the other end of the Molex connector:

All together it looks like this:

Now it’s time to put the heatsink in the hood and wire everything up. I was able to put the 2 18-10 cables I used through the stock holes, so it makes for a pretty clean install:

Then I put the splash shield on to make sure I had enough clearance:

Wired everything up and put the splash shield on for good:

I then mounted the drivers and DIM4 in the stand:

Plug it in and power up the DIM4:

 

[cdrewferd]

Deep Red and Turquiose wired. These are going to be on the same controller.

True Violet wired.

Now I have to get my moonlights added. Need to decide if I want to just stick with the original 3 moonlights, or add 1-2 more.

This is where I'm at. Hope to tackle the moonlights tonight. If the drivers show up tomorrow I'll start wiring them in the stand along with the DIM4. I bought a 24 slot molex connector to connect everything. This will allow me to remove the hood and do other work if necessary. Also will allow movement of the tank without having to leave the hood in the stand. My fan wires will also be run through this connector.

Once I had all the LEDs soldered on the heatsink it looked like this:

It was then time to work on the hood.

Take the stock hood:

Make it look like this:

Then I cut off all the little mounting poles that I wasn’t going to use. I also cut off the plastic surrounding the stock exhaust fan:

Next I installed the fans:

The 60mm fan that I used is twice as thick as the stock fan. To make it fit I did this:

Basically I just used a drill bit and enlarged the bottom holes so that they would slide over the stock posts. This is the exhaust fan so it should work great.

To connect the hood to the stand I wanted something that I could disconnect. I wanted to be able to remove the hood and tank completely without having to remove all the drivers and everything as well. To do that I used a 24 port Molex connector:

 

[cdrewferd]

For wire I ended up finding some 18-10 sprinkler wire at Home Depot. This gives me 20 wires total, even though I'm only using 14. I have some room to expand down the road if I decide to add moon lights or another fan if needed:

At this point I mounted the drivers on rails that fit in my stand:

I then wired them to the other end of the Molex connector:

All together it looks like this:

Now it's time to put the heatsink in the hood and wire everything up. I was able to put the 2 18-10 cables I used through the stock holes, so it makes for a pretty clean install:

Then I put the splash shield on to make sure I had enough clearance:

Wired everything up and put the splash shield on for good:

I then mounted the drivers and DIM4 in the stand:

Plug it in and power up the DIM4:

 

[cdrewferd]

At this point I just had the hood on the floor making sure that all the lights turned on correctly.

Here’s all the Royal Blues:

Add the Neutral Whites:

Add the Deep Red and Turquoise:

Then add the True Violet.

Opps, didn’t light up. Check and I had the feed wires crossed. 5 minutes later and here is everything lit up:

This is only at about 10% as the DIM4 wasn’t sending any signal to the drivers.

Then I upped it to 100% just to see:

You can see where the light is in relation to the tank. It already lit it up like this:

Ok, now we know that everything is working the way it’s supposed to. Time to put the hood back on.

Didn’t take a pic of that, sorry.

 

[cdrewferd]

Now it’s time for pics of the tank.

These were all taken last night when just the blues were on. I’m going to be borrowing my sisters T3i to see if I can get some better pictures of everything.

I’m loving the color though. The blues just make the colors pop. No way I can do the tank justice in pictures. I can tell that the zoas especially are happier as when I got home last night, after the lights being on all day, they weren’t extended like they were with the PC lights.

 

[tlsrcs]

AMAZING! i love seeing this tank.....and the zoas that come from it!