diy led fixtures

[Buddy08]

i decided im going to take the plunge and go with LED's. I will soon be purchasing them from rapid LED but thought i'd ask a few more questions before i made my purchase. I was debating between led's and t5s before i made my decision and the only reason i considered the t5's was due to the wide color spectrum they offered. With that being said, i have noticed the new ecotech radion led fixtures have red and green lights in them. Has anyone or have you seen any articles with diy fixtures containing Blues/whites/reds/and greens? Majority have cool whites and royal blues that i've seen. If so, could you post a picture or link to a build? If not, do you think it would be a good idea to implement some reds and if i do, what would be a good ratio to blues/whites? Also, my next question is optics. my tank is roughly 21 inches tall and i will have the lights 7 inches above the water. What optics would you recommend for which colors? thanks in advance.

 

[drew930]

How Wide is your tank ? and how far from front to back ?

I have the rapidleds . I have 16 blue and 8 white on a 40B. I will try to post pics. The ratio just determines on how you want it to look. The whites are your strong ones though so depending on what you keep in it really determines it.

 

[5pacey]

The reds are not really used for anything other than either having them on at night to see what comes out better than w/blue's (it is theorized that red light isn't seen by the critters), or to add some pink to the overall daylight look. Nobody really uses them basically unless maybe for some freshwater applications but I am not even sure about that. Having them on the fixture along w/greens makes it possible to achieve full RGB color spectrum assuming you have dimmable drivers and want to play w/it but in the end really it comes down to cool white / blue combo and the rest is just for fun. Besides you can always "stick on" couple of reds at any point to see what happens w/out building them into the fixture and complicating things.

Now, if you were getting the new Radions from EcoTech they come w/fully adjustable controllers so you can tweak the full RGB spectrum but you'll most likely settle on white/blue combo in the end anyway. Maybe if you want to do some storm/wheather simulations using the controller, some red flashes could be used but really that's just fun factor.

Best,

Spacey

 

[Buddy08]

its a standard 48x18x21 75g.

 

[5pacey]

Depending on how many LED's and how close/far apart you may not have to have any optics at all. For example... I made a DIY fixture - a retro for a BC29 hood w/24 CREE XRE's. 12 CW and 12 RB, driven by Meanwell ELN48-60D (dimmable) drivers. The tank was about 19" tall and the light was about 2" above water. I did get lenses (80 deg) because I thought I had to, but it made no sense w/the lenses... they would pop off when it got hot and I didn't want to mess w/epoxy'ing or silliconing them to the LED's. PAR measurements were ~1000 PAR at the surface, ~450 to 500 3rd of the way down and 100 to 200 at the sand level (1" deep) depending on wheather I was under the fixture or at the edge w/some shade from rocks.

The fixture was based on Nanaotuner's BC29 heatsink - roughly 11 3/4" long x 7" wide, centered over the tank roughly.

A quirky thing about the Dimwells (how I started calling the drivers) was that you couldn't dim the lights down to 0. Basically from 0 to about 30% lights were off, and then they'd come on suddenly. From 30% you could then go up to 100% smoothly. Same thing dimming them down. Smooth slope to 30% and then all OFF.

Another quirky thing is that even when they were OFF, they were always slightly on. If you turned off the lights in the room you could see the LED's were glowing.

Both above quirks are apparently "normal" and standard operating procedure, although you'd have to dig extensively to find this information, almost no-one ever says this. Other than that it worked fine, the only thing though the heatsink will get HOT as hell so you do need fans... get the SileneX ones... very nice super quiet and have plenty of CFM to cool the heatsink even though you can get more powerfull ones but they will most likely be a lot noisier and you don't need the extra power.

Spacey

 

[rysher]

i think the green and the red are for viewing purposes only and has nothing to do with spectrum for growth.
if ecotech would sell the same colors [white/blue] fixture, what would make them different from any other company that is selling an led fixture?

but i could be wrong.

 

[rysher]

D

Another quirky thing is that even when they were OFF, they were always slightly on. If you turned off the lights in the room you could see the LED's were glowing.

you have a short.

meanwells are rated 10-100% using pwm on the eln's same as the lpf's and the hlg's, if your end wasnt the problem, call meanwell, they have very good phone teech support, they might even exchange it if it is under warranty.

 

[5pacey]

I asked around and that was apparently normal - everyone else had that too. The glow wasn't significant just slight - well glow . Not a showstopper either, moonlights were a lot more powerful so not an issue - just a quirk. The lack of dimming from 0-30 was a bit more annoying because I planned to do a full sunrise and sunset but in the end I got used to that. Right the tank is defunct anyway because the bottom pane cracked and I had to perform an emergecy evac to a 10G (fortunately had very few inhabitants at the time), and am in the process of setting up a 90G.

Spacey

 

[Buddy08]

I think i will do 54x leds. 27 Royal blues, and 27 Cool whites ran by 4 dimmable drivers. the kit comes with optics so i will get 80 degrees for the wide flood of light to prevent spotlighting and color banding. I will use 2 of the existing t5's and reflectors and run a series of colored t5s to see which give me that nice pop. hopefully i can get this project underway soon, working a 8 day stretch at work has put a hold on it. i would also like to sell a few things i have extra and use the money towards my leds.

 

[RedStangGA]

A quirky thing about the Dimwells (how I started calling the drivers) was that you couldn't dim the lights down to 0. Basically from 0 to about 30% lights were off, and then they'd come on suddenly. From 30% you could then go up to 100% smoothly. Same thing dimming them down. Smooth slope to 30% and then all OFF.

Another quirky thing is that even when they were OFF, they were always slightly on. If you turned off the lights in the room you could see the LED's were glowing.

Interesting as my lights can be dimmed down to 10% and I don't get any glow with mine though I'll double check tonight. I have profiles set in my apex to allow me to adjust the color to my liking and I've tested from 10% up. I'll have to run through everything again though cause you've got me worried!

 

[5pacey]

Red,

I may have been wrong w/the 30% number and got it mixed up w/the Tunzee power head recommended minimum speed... It may have been 10% ... but it was pretty darn bright ... the main point was that I couldn't just smoothly dim them down to 0 w/out a sharp off at some visible level. Again, not a showstopper but annoying.

I too have the Apex and had it do the dimming for me.

Spacey

 

[RedStangGA]

Red,

I may have been wrong w/the 30% number and got it mixed up w/the Tunzee power head recommended minimum speed... It may have been 10% ... but it was pretty darn bright ... the main point was that I couldn't just smoothly dim them down to 0 w/out a sharp off at some visible level. Again, not a showstopper but annoying.

I too have the Apex and had it do the dimming for me.

Spacey

Concur totally with that! I'd love to ramp down to zero.


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