LED's w/Z's and P's (Question)

[therman]

I don't have a thread, though I have a few pics here:
LED lighting

The skull is actually Murray, the demonic talking skull from the Curse of Monkey Island.

 

[jrb_dakine]

I don't have a thread, though I have a few pics here:
LED lighting

The skull is actually Murray, the demonic talking skull from the Curse of Monkey Island.

VERY NICE!!!!!!!!!!!

Do you mind me asking your cost to build this?

 

[KafudaFish]

Ok thanks.

I remember that.

 

[blasterman789]

better colors, only thing I have trouble with is some of the pinks and purples on hawaiian PE types

Because you're using cool-white LEDs which have crappy color. Rather than just blindly doing what other LED guys were telling me to do I tested various LED combos and found RB + Cool-white delivered the worst color. 2:1 RB+neutral fixes a lot of these problems. 3:1 RB + warm works as well.

The only problem I've found with LED is that it's real easy to tick off zoos with too much blue light (the PAR component). They'll either lay compressed as close to the rock as they can, or just stay closed if it's too bright. The tolerance is much more narrow than T5 because of the increased directionality of LED. I do notice that my dark green button polyps tend to love as much light as they can get while lighter colored zoos want much less.

 

[therman]

Because you're using cool-white LEDs which have crappy color. Rather than just blindly doing what other LED guys were telling me to do I tested various LED combos and found RB + Cool-white delivered the worst color. 2:1 RB+neutral fixes a lot of these problems. 3:1 RB + warm works as well.

The only problem I've found with LED is that it's real easy to tick off zoos with too much blue light (the PAR component). They'll either lay compressed as close to the rock as they can, or just stay closed if it's too bright. The tolerance is much more narrow than T5 because of the increased directionality of LED. I do notice that my dark green button polyps tend to love as much light as they can get while lighter colored zoos want much less.

Hmmmm... How many different polyps have you tried under your different LED rigs and how long did you try them for? I have phenomenal color on really everything except two hawaiian PE morphs (electric ladies and star trek PE). I would hardly call these results "crappy color". They are fully dimmable after all, and there is plenty of red and yellow spectrum in the WG bin XR-Es to make them as warm as you would ever want in a reef. I have tried probably 100 morphs, many high end polyps under the LEDs with overall great results. 3:1 RB or even 2:1 must be incredibly blue...are you dimming them or just running them all at the same current?

 

[therman]

VERY NICE!!!!!!!!!!!

Do you mind me asking your cost to build this?

Unfortunately the group buys for Cree LEDs on another forum have been squashed due to changes in the user agreement, so the LEDs were cheaper than most people can get them for now.

The light over the polyp tank was done with buckpucks, before Meanwells were really discovered, so it could probably be done cheaper now.

2 24V power supplies@$15 ea
44 Cree XR-Es@ $5.25 ea
44 20 deg optics @$1 ea
8 dimming buckpucks @$20 ea
24"x5 heatsink @$48

Total $513, plus odds and ends (fans, wiring, thermal epoxy, etc.) and shipping it was close to $600. I run it at maybe 600mA average and it draws about 130W. Considering the versatility, colors, growth, energy savings, and savings on replacement bulbs I think it's worth every penny. You could build it with 4 Meanwell ELN-60-48 and save about $90 over the buckpucks too.

The 156 array is crazy nice....but rather pricey too