DIY LED Setup for shallow rimless cube

[DustinB]

Hey guys, wondering if you can recommend a good led combo and quantity for my tank. The first and only time I tried LEDs was 2 years ago and I was severely disappointed in the look. That was 50/50 mix of royal blue and cool white. Looking at a lot of recent threads it looks like people have come up with some cool combos.

I have a DSA neo nano currently running a 250w ab 20k bulb on a lumatek ballast. This gives me a nice 14k color on this ballast with decent pop. I'm really looking for a 14-20k look with insane pop. I plan to use a 10" square heatsink and some custom drivers with a diy controller to adjust the channels.

The tank is 24x24x13 high. I have a shroud housing my metal halide pendant. I would like to put the led pendant in there so I'm not sure what if any optics I will need. The shroud has an ID of 15" square with the bottom being 13" from the water surface.

Can anyone recommend a good setup for this and the proper way to arrange the LEDs? I can't really find any recommended setups and layouts for a 24x24 shallow tank with a 13" pendant height above the water. Thanks!

 

[diciple]

Stevesleds.com I would go full spectrum I assume you mean 10"x10" heatsink so you probably run 24 LEDs so 12 rb 8 neutral white 5k 2 cyan 1 violet

 

[diciple]

Forgot to mention these are Phillips luxeon LEDs superior to Cree you may even be able to fit like 30 LEDs good luck also Rc sponsor rapid LEDs good folks don't know if they carry the Phillips brand

 

[DustinB]

What do you think about this? I've been looking at some LEDS on a non-sponsor site.

I put together a layout I think might work, but may be too many LED's. This is on a 10"x10" heatsink 13-14" above the water surface, 13" water depth. Would I need optics on this at all? Any way I can do this with fewer LED's? I really don't want to see color spots, I want it to look as good or better than my metal halide pendant. Main reason I'm looking at switching is to avoid the heat.

Layout consists of:

(9x) Cree XT-E 3-ups
(5x) Ocean Coral White 3-ups
(4x) Cree XT-E Cool White
(8x) Hyper Violet

I'll also need to look at the best options for driving these with the fewest power supplies. I will probably be using the meanwell LDD drivers and an arduino to do the dimming.

 

[zachts]

Forget the cool whites and just use 12 violets. Also with 54 LEDs you will only need them to be running 350mA, without any optics. Any higher current and you'd just be baking your corals, or end up hanging the fixture really high/diming them way down, wasting light and efficiency.

Scale that number back quite a bit, no more than 36 LEDs should be required and that is probably over kill if you run them higher.

8 x 3ups running at 500mA one LDD-500H for Whites and one for Royal Blue (9 will need 3 x LDD drivers)
5 x OCW running at 350mA on one LDD-350H
10 x 430nm and 4 x 405nm Violets running 500mA on one LDD-500H

I'd suggest the new solderless version OCW that uses Cree chips, you could use 3 separate drivers that way if you wanted to fine tune the color, or get the equivalent from Steve's LEDs. Also only use the new version of the violets, the ones with the plastic domes will burn up after about 2 or 3 months.

This will more than handle SPS @ 13" from water with another 13" to sand bed.

 

[DustinB]

Thanks a lot for the info.

You mentioned this would be too many LED's, but I count 53 total based on the recommended setup for the drivers. How would you recommend scaling it back to 36?

I'm also wondering about the best way to arrange the LED's. I know I need to have them as close together as possible to avoid spotlighting or the "disco" effect. Should these be arranged in a circular or square pattern? I'm guessing a square pattern to give the best light spread for my tank? I don't want any dark areas or any spotlighting. I'd like to have a smooth even color like my metal halide pendant if possible.

Thanks!

 

[DustinB]

Here's my updated layout. I found an 8.46" heatsink at heatsinkusa with the t-slots like the makersink, but I got it square.

(8x) Cree 3-UPS (RB,RB,NW)
(4x) Ocean Coral White (Red,Blue,Cyan)
(8x) Hyper Violet
(4x) True Violet
(4x) Cool Blue

Should this do the job?

 

[zachts]

Your currently proposed combo looks good to me. the layout is not bad either. You should rotate two of the groups one LED's turn so that the 3-up Cree chips are not on the same slot of the T-slot heatsink. that will improve thermal efficiency and heat dissipation. You may need to use a diffuser of some sort as a splash guard to eliminate disco and give the same even light as your MH, but that can be played with after installation if the disco is not to your liking, you'll have some regardless if you use a clear splash guard in almost every setup that has more than two LED colors. sometimes it's annoying, sometimes not. But some peal and stick diffuser would solve the issue if you have it, or just some fine grit sand paper on the acrylic.

There's nothing wrong with using more LEDs at lower drive current. the end result is usually better than fewer at higher current.

if you wanted to reduce to ~ 36 and run them a bit higher then just cluster them into 3 groups, give or take a few LEDs. There's a lot of thumb to the wind involved when controllability is involved, but suffice it to say that 36 LEDs using the old 2 RB to one White method was sufficient for lighting a standard 55 gallon when used with at least 80 degree optics and ran between 700 and 1000mA............

I would say your on the track for a very good performing light.

 

[Aqualund]

I like your idea for the clusters on the large heatsink. I have been balking at doing my new led set up because I just cant decide how I want it to look, But i like yours. I thought I'd post with you what I've found by researching wavelengths to accommodate growth, pigmentation, absorption, and emission.

Exite: 440-460, 480-496, 500-510, 540-590 (nm)

Chlorophyll a: 417,430,664
Chlorphyll b: 460,647
Chlorohpyll c: 442,630

Now some of the individual wavelengths are just not available on a single chip. Like most of the higher 500's and low 600's are covered with the white phosphor leds.

but important thing to note is that for the chloro a the "peak" spectrum is at 428, and the steve's leds are like 419-420. The closest I found to 428 was 430 at led group buy.

And achieving the exite spectrums will ensure you're getting the most pop you can get for the widest variety of corals.

sources:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2009/1/aafeature1
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2006/9/aafeature

and from there they have the study sources which supplied the data.

 

[DustinB]

I started laying out the driver configuration shown here:



I'm wondering if there is a better way to do it and what power supply I should use. Right now it shows a max of 36v on one string. However, the Hyper Violets show 3.0v min to 3.6v max. I'm wondering if running all of these drivers on one power supply will end up dropping the voltage on the HV's below 3v per LED. If that will happen, then I guess it would be best to go with a 48v power supply which could help me run the royal blues on a single string, but I run into the same issue about a possible voltage drop.

Another concern is about the heat dissipated by the cool blue string driver dropping from either 36v to 48v down to 13.2v. Is it the meanwell driver limiting the voltage, or is it the LED itself limiting the voltage? If it is the meanwell, how is it limiting the voltage? I'm used to the CAT4101 driver where you have to apply no more than 1 volt higher than the string requires to the driver.

How would you guys recommend laying these out and with what power supply? I'm also looking at dropping the voltage down to 12v to power a fan and moonlights, but I can get that part covered. I'd really like to only have one chord for power going to the fixture.

This is the last bit I need to figure out before I order everything. Thanks!

 

[pakirri]

I am doing something similar for my 24x24x9

10" x 10" heatsink
4 ocw
4 nw
8 hv
16 rb
1 ww for moon

 

[pakirri]

I will run the moon on a ldd-300h

 

[pakirri]

And dim with jarduino jeje

 

[bigguyuk]

Nice Box Got a Picture of the layout inside

 

[pakirri]

Im still working on connecting the serial ports its not finished yet

 

[bigguyuk]

ok cool

 

[pakirri]

Here it is, now back at authors original topic

 

[pakirri]

ok cool