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Author Topic: My diy led lighting.  (Read 2674 times)

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Offline CoralBeauties

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My diy led lighting.
« on: March 16, 2018, 23:38:00 »
I had a request to post up some pics of my diy led lighting.  I built these well over 5 years ago when leds were first coming out as a lighting option.  I have upgraded some of the leds as better ones came out and added more leds to my setup. I started with 3 heat sinks with 24 leds on each sink.  I have since more this doubled the led count to 48 on each sink.  I also added 2 small heat sinks to each original sink with another 22 leds.  So now my total led count is 210 three watt cree leds.  Justin (merlin)  got me into running my system using an ardurino controller and drivers.  With the ardurino I am able to control the output of 5 different colors and time them to very slowly ramp up and down for sun rise and set.  As with a lot of led lighting I was getting a lot of shadowing so I added two 80 watt t-5 bulbs.  One of the bulbs is a blue+ and the second is an actinic.  The pictures are from before I added the t-5s.  Ive checked the par readings  on my corals and the highest par I have is on my wwc blueberry which is about 8 inches from the water surface and that reading is 740 par.  My tank is a 180 gallon tank which has a depth of 24 in.  I am able to get 250 par down on the sand bed of the tank.  I am very pleased with the performance of my lighting but the looks of all the heat sinks and wiring really need to be in a hood or it would look terrible exposed for everyone to see. 
Jeff

Offline SweetReefOH

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Re: My diy led lighting.
« Reply #1 on: March 17, 2018, 12:46:11 »
Impressive!

Offline yinyang

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Re: My diy led lighting.
« Reply #2 on: March 17, 2018, 15:08:10 »
Awesome setup!

Offline Keith92

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Re: My diy led lighting.
« Reply #3 on: March 17, 2018, 15:44:20 »
Really nice Jeff.

You get amazing coral coloration

Offline CoralBeauties

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Re: My diy led lighting.
« Reply #4 on: March 17, 2018, 16:33:06 »
thanks guys.  I am guessing my output is probably close to the ultra expensive led lights for a fraction of the costs but not the clean looks of radions.
Jeff

 

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