jedimasterben's planted tank light build

[RayWhisperer]

There is nothing simple about led shit. Halides, pc's, T5's and vho's are simple. I honestly don't even know why I try and build led's. it's all too much for me.

[jedimasterben]

They're not really all that simple. Have you ever wired up a set of fluorescents or have you only purchased pre-built?

[RayWhisperer]

I've wired NO, HO and VHO fluorescents, as well as pc's and halides. A ballast is easy. It has power in and wires for each bulb. No signals going to dimmers and various thingamajigs to god knows WTF else.

[RayWhisperer]

Now that I'm thinking about it, I've even wired up cold cathode tubes for sunrise/sunset goodness. Rebuilt an entire nc 12 hood with a 150 halide, 12 fans, the cct, controllers to vary the fan speeds, home made calcium reactor, the works. I never sat there scratching my head wondering what went where, and for what purpose.

[jedimasterben]

I've wired NO, HO and VHO fluorescents, as well as pc's and halides. A ballast is easy. It has power in and wires for each bulb. No signals going to dimmers and various thingamajigs to god knows WTF else.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I've even wired up cold cathode tubes for sunrise/sunset goodness. Rebuilt an entire nc 12 hood with a 150 halide, 12 fans, the cct, controllers to vary the fan speeds, home made calcium reactor, the works. I never sat there scratching my head wondering what went where, and for what purpose.

But you have the basic concept, which stays the same. Power/data in, power/data out.

 

 

 

 

Yo dawg, i herd you liek white fans.

 

 

 

Yes, sexy legs.

 

 

 

 

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[bdevillier19]

looking good. i dont see any hot glue though, what gives?

[Horerczy]

 

Awesome perspective screw in this photo.

 

I like how your thread for this on that forum for fresh plant lovers got all technical. XD

[RayWhisperer]

Perhaps to you. In all other forms of lighting you have wires, a ballast, a bulb and a switch. Even on incandescent room lighting with a dimmer, it's just adding in a potentiometer to adjust the power being applied to the bulb. It's all linear.

 

Here I need to convert the power, add in the drivers, throw in some kind of splitting board connect the drivers to a controller, then wire it into the diodes. Nothing is linear. Power goes in straight up, then bangs a 90 to the right, comes back to center less than what it was, splits 5 different ways, then finally goes into the actual light source. It's not simple enough, linear enough, for me to grasp. I'm a dumb.

[jedimasterben]

After running the wire through the back of the dresser the tank is sitting on, getting it all wired up, turning on the Bluefish (which took over an hour to Blinkup because Samsung phones are the worst in the world and can't do it), nothing worked. I couldn't even disable the pulldown resistors on the LDD boards, the LEDs still would not turn on. This would make the third LDD board that has done this.

[jedimasterben]

Hooked everything up to a MakersDriver 5up Pro and it's all working. Will clean up the tank a bit before getting some pics with the DSLR.

[jedimasterben]

PAR from this light is nuts.

[jedimasterben]

Done. (for the most part, hooked it up temporarily until the new gooseneck arrives)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Horerczy]

Like planted tank high light nuts or higher than that?

[jedimasterben]

PAR at 100% (lime at 25%)

 

 

PAR at 50% (lime at 12.5%)

 

 

Sorry for the tiny images, not sure why they exported like that. Also keep in mind that these are on LDD-350, so I could technically crank it far higher than that on 700mA/1A drivers

[Horerczy]

Wow the limes have quite the impact.

 

Excellent levels for a planted tank overall.

[gamezawy]

Nice build , please allow me to ask some questions about your nice build

 

1- Are you running every same color of white leds on a 350 mA that means every white led is only taking 175mA ?

 

2- How much do you think the over all color temperature of your build ?

 

3- And why the use of Lime leds what is its benefits ? specially for human eyes ?

 

I am asking this because i have just finished a vero build for a 120P tank and i dont really like the color of my tank now

 

the build is 4 clusters of :

 

Bridgelux vero13 5000K 90CRI runing at 625 mA

Bridgelux Vero 10 3000K 97CRI runing at 525 mA

 

colored leds all runnig at 700 mA

 

1x LEDgroupbuy 430nm hyper violet

1x LEDgroupbuy semi led cyan

1x XTE royal blue

1x XPE blue

[Reefkid88]

Damn Ben,looking f*cking sick man.

[jedimasterben]

Wow the limes have quite the impact.

 

Excellent levels for a planted tank overall.

Yeah, four of them is surprisingly overpowering, even for the Veros.

[jedimasterben]

 

Nice build , please allow me to ask some questions about your nice build

1- Are you running every same color of white leds on a 350 mA that means every white led is only taking 175mA ?

2- How much do you think the over all color temperature of your build ?

3- And why the use of Lime leds what is its benefits ? specially for human eyes ?

I am asking this because i have just finished a vero build for a 120P tank and i dont really like the color of my tank now

the build is 4 clusters of :

Bridgelux vero13 5000K 90CRI runing at 625 mA
Bridgelux Vero 10 3000K 97CRI runing at 525 mA

colored leds all runnig at 700 mA

1x LEDgroupbuy 430nm hyper violet
1x LEDgroupbuy semi led cyan
1x XTE royal blue
1x XPE blue

1) Correct, the white LEDs are in parallel and only receiving a maximum of 175mA each, and I am only running them at 50% of that.

 

2) I dunno, probably around 6000K? Its all a nice white to the eye like in the photos.

 

3) Lime are a broad-spectrum green that peak where the human eye sees best, so they are visually extremely bright and give visual punch similar to metal halides. Very few are needed for planted tanks. I'm running four of them at 25% peak on a 350mA driver. Any more than 25% and they get a little overpowering.

 

Color to the eye is very subjective. What I would do is lower all LEDs to 25%, and raise/lower each color to tune it until you find what you like, then raise them up in that same ratio to the power levels you require.

Damn Ben,looking f*cking sick man.

Thanks! The tank is SO much more clear today, should have waited to take pics

[Horerczy]

Ugh. Between this and my recent discovery of pea puffers I'm getting close to ending up with a new fresh tank.

[gena]

Awesome FW Ben! Are you going to feed the baby guppies to your SW tank? I had a guppy tank in college and they were always having babies.

[jedimasterben]

Awesome FW Ben! Are you going to feed the baby guppies to your SW tank? I had a guppy tank in college and they were always having babies.

I do it when I remember to. When I cleaned the tank yesterday (drained it completely, added two gallons, stirred the sand, drained the two gallons, added two more, etc, did that maybe 10 times) I found a couple of newborn guppies that were dead/dying so I put them in the reef and the Starcki damsel ate them both

 

I need to get some more nice guppies, the few I got pics of are the only nice ones, and their babies aren't really nice, mostly just silver.

[Psychosis]

So,when are you building a vivarium? It's fun bro. Convert.

[jedimasterben]

Nah, two tanks is the limit. With a mini me coming in September I don't know if even one is going to be under the limit

[KnH]

I have a 6' tank I need to re-work, do you think a repeating patern of 3 that you are using would work ,

or do you have a better layout Idea for a 6' tank