DIY LED

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rupatel

Premium Member
What do think about my led build plan that I am about to start. The tank is 120g 48x24x24 It will have 42 Luxeon ES 3 Watt LEDs - Royal Blue and 42 - Luxeon ES 3 Watt LEDs – Cool white. There will be 2 power supplies with 4 driver and each driver can handle 3 arrays of 7 leds each. And a typhon for controller.

I have everything here at home, just want to get your opinions if I should go ahead and proceed with the build?

Here is the kit I ordered
http://shop.stevesleds.com/SPS-Grade-LED-Retrofit-Kit-Package-64-84-tanks-SPS-Retrofit-Kit-64-84.htm
 
Honestly, i don't think you need as many LEDs as you got, but it won't hurt to have too much when they are dimmable. Personally, i would pull off a string or 2 of whites, they are much brighter than the blues so a 2:1 ratio of blue:white usually has a good color balance. On my Pico i am running a 3:1 ratio and don't think the color is too blue at all.

As for the layout, it looks good to me. Depending on where your rock is placed, you may want to spread the outer bars out 2" more on each side to limit shaded spots.


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I know its over kill but like you said, ill use the dimmers. I was thinking about 2 to 1 but the new es leds are 20% brighter so hopefully it wont be to white. I will move them apart an inch or two.

Thanks for the input
 
No problem. With the dimmers you are safe with any combo. Plus, under-driving the LEDs will let them run very cool :)

Good luck the build!


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I just got a string of the Luxeons - 2 white and 11 royal blue. It is not blue enough for me. It looks a little purple actually. I think it is because the Luxeon white are so bright that the 2 whites are washing out the 11 royal blue. I think the Cree royal blue are brighter than the Luxeon royal blue, too. Maybe it's the optics. Maybe the Steve's optics block more light than the Cree optics. I don't know. Based on this recent experience, I recommend at least 7 of the Luxeon royal blue for every 1 Luxeon white. And I don't know if I would use the Steve's optics until I compared to some others.

David
 
I just set up crees 24 blue and 24 white and it is to blue for my liking. But i like to see all the colors in my tank. This makes everything look like blue tint. Corals seem to like it, as they are opening up and looking better then they have ever looked. Btw my leds are not on a dimable setup.
 
You might think about getting a couple red and green leds to balance your spectrum. There are several 3w red and green leds out there.
 
I did 7 nw crees to 17 rb crees and I'm guessing my color temp to be 16k. I was hoping for a little more blue than I ended up with. I'd check the spectrum of the white you're using. Cool white leds spike in the blue and have low spectrum elsewhere. Neutral white have very little blue and need more royal blues to counter.

I think the plan looks great. Number of LEDs seems right. Distribution should be even. You might consider flipping the middle so that the first led is a white and the last is a blue. On my build all of my leds on the furthest left and right points are rb so the temp is a bit different at the edges, but mixing that in your three rows should eliminate the possibility.
 
Matt, I actually was going to do that, I just forgot to change the plans. I was thinking about mounting them in pairs so i would have one blue and white right next to each other and then 1.5 in. space and so on.
 
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