DIY T5/LED Hybrid Build

[kory1006]

Since they seem to be all the rage, figured I’d get to work on mine.

Housing - An old Current USA Nova 6 bulb T5

LEDs so far - 8x Luxeon M Royal Blue
4x Bridgelux BXRA 4k White

Heatsinks - 2x 12”x4”

Power Supply - 48v 350 watt

T5 Stuff - 2x ATI Coral Plus
LET Miro-4 48” Retro fit kit

I still need to get the following;

Drivers - 3x Meanwell LDD 700ma Hyper Violet / Cool Blue
2x Meanwell LDD 1000ma Luxeon M
2x Meanwell LDD 500ma BXRA

Controller - Coralux Storm

LEDs - 24x Hyper Voilet
8x Cool Blue

This is all going over my 90g mixed reef.

 

[kory1006]

Pictures of the build so far;

Gutted the housing

Housing with the new reflectors, ballast, fans and bulbs

T5's Lit

Over the tank with the T5's

Luxeon M and BXRA on the heatsinks

Seeing what space I have to work with

 

[aguila88psi]

Sweet, looking forward to the build.

My only recomendation would be to see if you can add two t5 per reflector

 

[MrHarvard]

Wow man great looking fixture and awesome idea! I have a few plans for a fixture like this I have been working on for awhile now. If I may give give one suggestion if your only going to run 2 T5s I would suggest switching the ATI coral plus bulbs to ATI aqua blue special bulbs I think the look and spectrum would be a better choice. Again, just a suggestion. Either way awesome build tagging along!

 

[CrazyEyes]

Good choice on the Bxra's and Luxeon M's man. Those LEDs are seriously something insane. Also, another good call on adding all those HV LEDs, such an important spectrum that gets overlooked so much.

 

[kory1006]

Good choice on the Bxra's and Luxeon M's man. Those LEDs are seriously something insane. Also, another good call on adding all those HV LEDs, such an important spectrum that gets overlooked so much.

I have been trying to copy jedi's build over on NR. More his original build, than the new crazy one he's doing with the Vero's.

 

[CrazyEyes]

He is all over the place man. I stopped following his build. I actually was just scrolling through it lastnight and saw that he was using the vero's now. I actually remember him mentioning those.

 

[Milfordguy]

I used veros on my 40B and bxra's on my girlfriends dads build. Can't notice a difference.

 

[kory1006]

I used veros on my 40B and bxra's on my girlfriends dads build. Can't notice a difference.

I have the BXRA's on my Biocube. Have had them on there now for over 6 months and like the way it looks.

 

[CrazyEyes]

Im not sure which Vero he is using, probably the 29 though. If that's the case I'm sure it's because the vero 29 puts out 10,000lumens at 2.1A where the 950B puts out 950 lumens at 0.5A. Also the Vero 29 has a forward voltage of 39.8 @ 2.1A where the 950B is 21 forward volts at just 0.5 so the vero 29 is by far more efficient. Buuuuut, the Vero is like $45-$50 and the 950B is only around $7-$8.

 

[kory1006]

Not only that, you'd have to hang the Vero pretty high off the tank to get spread. Running more than say 2, wouldn't be very cost effective.

 

[CrazyEyes]

Why do you say that?

 

[kory1006]

Well first of all like you were saying, output. One Vero 29 is about the equivalent of 10x BXRA in lumens. You probably wouldn't want to run more than one Vero per 24x24 area, unless it was dimmed/driven fairly low. And well spread of course is kind of self explanatory. No optic/reflector will give crazy light spill. If you do run reflector, you would have to hang it fairly high to get spread. The Vero 29 would probably make a good replacement for street lamps, lol.

The Vero 13 is probably the most I would ever want to put over a tank. Those are 2000 lumens at 500ma and only $9.

 

[CrazyEyes]

Dont get me wrong, I completely agree that there is no need for a vero over anything like 90 or 75g. Maybe if it was a fairly large tank. But then again Ben's tank isn't all that big anyways.

 

[tylbaart]

I cheated used a coralife halide pc fixture gutted stuffed in 4 t5 and two orphek pr156 fixtures.

 

[kory1006]

Very nice.!

 

[bmullikin1]

nice job, what is the distance between the 2 t5 reflectors and the overall width of the fixture.

 

[kory1006]

nice job, what is the distance between the 2 t5 reflectors and the overall width of the fixture.

From reflector edge to reflector edge there is 5 1/4". External width of the fixture is 11 3/4".

 

[snake1]

any updated pics

 

[kory1006]

Nothing yet. Still trying to decide if I want to spend the extra money and get the Bluefish controller or just say the hell with it and get a Storm. Hopefully within the next couple of weeks I will have the LEDs in and wired up.