DIY LED fixture help

[jmowbray]

This is my plan but I need some help:

The tank is a standard 90 gallon. I'm looking at using 2-18inch makersLED heat sinks, each sink will have 24 LEDs. 12 White and 12 blue for each sink. Which brings me to my first question. Which Cree LEDs do I use? There are XP-E, XP-G, XR-E"¦ ???? I just don't know where to start. Also there are different colors to the blues (blue, royal blue)?

Now on to optics. I think 60's are best as I don't have a deep tank and don't need the light spread too far. Am I correct in that?

For the two heatsinks each string will have a dimmable ballast so four ballast total. I've been looking and it looks to me that I want to stick with Inventronics brand. However, according to reefledlights.com I would have to go with a 50W driver for each string. Is that enough? The 50W is rated to run 6-12 Cree XP-Gs. It's also listed as clearance so I'm not sure they may be discontinuing them"¦.

My end plan is to run them via a ALC. I'm going to chain each of the colors together with a medusa and then hook them into the ALC that way as the ALC has only two 0-10v ports.

Please feel free to make any comments as I really am new to this.

Thanks for all your help!

 

[pwreef]

Newest LEDs are XT-E for royal blue and XP-G and XM-L for whites. There are also XT-E whites that are new, but not a lot of vendors carry yet. Cutter does. Personally I am going with 2:1 ratio of Royal Blue to Neutral White XT-E, plus some violet 420nm, red, turquoise and cool blue for supplement colors. Most people run cool white as white, as it has been the most popular and available choice for years. Neutrals have higher CRI. Wikipedia that if you don't know what that means. If you go 1:1 blue to white the whites overpower the blue when both at 100%. So those are your base colors. You can then add others to supplement. Read up on it. Inventronics will work fine for your ALC. You can run up to 18 XT-Es on a single 40W driver at 700mA. Good luck!

 

[jmowbray]

Thanks pwreef. I will do some researching into those terms and the XT-E LEDs.

 

[jmowbray]

One person that's it?

 

[drtrash]

I've only built 1 so far so just leaning. I built mine to add supplemental colors, so look into other colors of spectrum. Built mine, looked at color and design, took it apart and rebuilt. I would like to get it right first time but not going to happen, atleast no to me.

 

[jmowbray]

Bump...

 

[Dukester]

Heres mine, no optics, 2:1 RB:CW 60 LEDS extremely happy with it.

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[AMDphenomx4]

Also look into the Rebel ES Royal Blue instead of the XT-E Royal Blue. They put out 20-50% more light per watt.