Completed LED Hood with pictures

[SoFloReefer]

Here is my completed 24 -3 watt Cree LED fixture. 16 Royal Blues and 8 Neutral Whites. I'm extremely happy with the color combination and I'm running both strings dimmed on two ELN-60-48D drivers. I used RapidLed's 4.25"x23" drilled and tapped heat sink. The time saved with the heat sink being drilled and tapped was worth the extra money. The strings are both run at 750 mA. I tried running the fixture with passive cooling and I thought it became too hot so I hooked up a 120 mm fan I had laying around. I'm running it at around 9 volts so it is totally quite. The heat sink now is totally cool to the touch. The total cost is around $300 and worth every penny. The cooler of the light is adjustable from around 6000 K to a pure 20000+ K atinnic look. Unfortunately my camera cannot pickup the atinnic look, but it makes all of my corals look spectacular. I wasn't able to find too many examples of fixtures for smaller tanks so hopefully this will help those looking to complete a similar project. My tank is a 20 long.

I didn't take pics while I was building the fixture, only of the finished results.

 

[fote03]

Looks nice. What optics did you put on them?

 

[SoFloReefer]

No optics. The waters not deep enough to require them and the light mixes better without them. The wooden enclosure keeps any light from spilling out of the tank.

 

[AC2020x]

Very nice set-up, I'm doing something similar on a slightly larger heatsink from heatsink USA with 24 LED's for my 29g.

When you say that it was too hot, how hot was it. From what i've heard most people say if you can keep your hand on it without burning, then it is fine. I'm just wondering cause i'd like not to have to use a fan if not necessary.

 

[SoFloReefer]

It really wasn't too hot. Maybe 150 F (total guess). I had the fan and wall wart so I figured I would hook it up. Now it is ambient temp.