Modifying LEDs

[Aquatic Reef Creations]

Has anyone in the club ever modified one of the Chinese black box LEDs?

I have 4 units, 3 of them are fairly new (white) and the fourth is a little older (black). All of them are dimmable and have seperate blue and white channels. These lights do not have the lenses on the diodes. I am thinking about playing around with the older model to see how much of a pain it would be to change out a few of the white LEDs and swap in a few different colors to make them full spectrum. I have watched several videos on U Tube and it does not look very difficult. I have found LED bulbs on EBay in the colors I am thinking about adding.
The light I am thinking about has 55 3 watt LEDs. I am thinking about swapping out 3 whites and making them red, removing another 2 whites and swapping them to a UV LED and maybe 5 other whites and swapping them with some royal blue LEDs.
Any thoughts?
Anyone have any of the red, royal blue or UV LEDs that they don't need?
Still trying to figure out my lighting to get it to where I like the look of it while still providing adequate lighting for the tank.

I hope that this makes sense?
Thanks for any input.

 

[rovster]

I'm no led expert but first thing I'd look into is if you can run all those leds on the same channel. The drivers usually recommended for colored channels are smaller. May not be an issue.

 

[Pmj]

I recently changed out some LEDs, see my post about my lack of soldering skills. It was fairly easy but took a bit to get the hang of it.

Im still not finished and actually going to do the opposite as far as reds. I read that reds are not really needed if you have the lower K whites (3500-6k max). Those whites supposedly have more than enough red in their spectrum and generally the cool whites aren't very useful. So I replaced a few 12k cool whites for 5K whites. I'm also going to add some 420 NM violets and 480 NM true blues.

You can get LEDs pretty dirt cheap on ebay, but they do take quite a while to receive from China (mine took like 3 weeks). I bought the 420s on reefbreeders for $1.50 each but they arrive in like 3 days with free shipping, so more expensive but still not much if you are only replacing a few.

 

[Diesel3443]

I modify mine all the time. Like above dont add reds, just pull the 12K whites and replace them with NW. Also add more violets and blues.

 

[Nanron]

led's

led's

Make sure you test the positive and negative sides. If you put them in backwards this will negate the entire string in that circuit.

 

[mlivvy]

Check what type of leds were used and how they are mounted. Some led's can be chiseled off easily while others are not. Also you need to make sure that you can actually get those led's. I took apart a chinese fixture a while back in the hopes to do the same and the drivers had some crazy numbers associated to it. Long story short the led's I would probably need for that fixture were located in some corner store in a back alley behind a mountain in china.

 

[Diesel3443]

^^ Yikes. Looks like I got lucky.