coolwaters Posted September 11, 2008 Author Share Posted September 11, 2008 the tank is about 5g more or less. the tank shot above only had 3 blue and 5 white. thats why it looks so white. it gets pretty ugly with 2 blue and 5 whites... Link to comment
coolwaters Posted September 14, 2008 Author Share Posted September 14, 2008 aww crap i made a stupid move. kinda just bought my ric and just noticed my LED lights dont work. (someone stepped on it) my sister let her friend borrow the soldering iron and its still at his house... im accumulating it atm. using a 23w 6.7k bulb from far away. its closing up so i'll give it some time. havent had a lot of coral so this accumulating stuff is still kinda new. never lost anything yet. Link to comment
SmittyCoco Posted September 14, 2008 Share Posted September 14, 2008 Awesome on the ric purchase. Why do people keep steping on your light? I am confused. Thats 3 times now if I am counting right. Oh yeah pictures when you get it up and going again. Link to comment
coolwaters Posted September 14, 2008 Author Share Posted September 14, 2008 i dont have a work bench so sometimes i live it on the floor to make room for other stuff. usally my parents arent home but my mom manages to ruin my things. all the other times the solder keeps falling off i hope it wont bleach my rics... Link to comment
evilc66 Posted September 14, 2008 Share Posted September 14, 2008 You won't bleach your rics. You will notice that they stay smaller than they normally would. Mine split like crazy. Why does your solder keep falling off? Thats usually a sigh of a poorly prepared surface, or a cold solder joint. Is your iron too small wattage wise? What type of solder are you using? It's not lead free is it? Link to comment
coolwaters Posted September 14, 2008 Author Share Posted September 14, 2008 im using tin lead. only half of the solder keeps falling off. i just need some flux and im good. im using a industrial grade soldering iron that my mom got from work. its rated to about 800F i think. yeah i noticed pure blue LEDs will make them split a lot faster. btw guys is it natural for the ric to be open when theres no light? well this morning it was open and the only light there were is the light from the window. and its not directy exposed. Link to comment
evilc66 Posted September 14, 2008 Share Posted September 14, 2008 Of course it will open. It will open quite large as it's trying to get as much light as possible. The tip temperature is only part of the equation with a soldering iron. The tip temp will show you what types of solder it will be good for. 800F is a good all purpose temp. The wattage will be your next issue. With you mounting the LEDs directly to the heatsink, you need a lot of wattage to be able to heat up all surfaces you are soldering to. You may not be leaving the iron on long enough for everything to come up to the same temp before you start adding solder. This will leave you with a cold joint that will fail. A 50W+ iron should be good for this. If you have an iron that is this big or bigger, then you need to look at how you are soldering everything, and that everything is hot enough before you add solder. Flux will help a little, but the flux that is in your solder should be more than enough to whet the joint and clean the surfaces. Hope some of this points you in the right direction. Link to comment
coolwaters Posted September 15, 2008 Author Share Posted September 15, 2008 crap...thanks evil i forgot that mounting it on a heatsink will effect the soldering process. i was wondering why it wasnt getting hot... Link to comment
evilc66 Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 Ya. You need big wattage to overcome that. That sounds like what your problem is. Find a good Weller iron if you are going to be doing a lot of soldering. This would be good if you want just a pencil iron (has a good fine tip, and they are replaceable/changeable). This one is better as you can adjust your tip temperature, but it's only 40W which is still fine. The industrial irons are better (and give you more tip options), but the price jumps to over $120 for a basic adjustable. If you can swing it, get one of these. Has multiple temperature profiles, nice iron, and a lot of saftey features (like overtemp protection, ESD, blah, blah, blah). I love mine, but they don't come cheap. Reason you need high wattage is so that you can heat up the parts as quickly as possible. Keeping the LEDs at a high temperature for a long time while you are waiting for everything else to heat up can damage the LED. Look at the spec sheet for the reflow profiles to see an example of how long they actually keep the soldering temperatures up (the other stages are warmup stages). Link to comment
coolwaters Posted September 15, 2008 Author Share Posted September 15, 2008 thanks for that soldering tip. i'll remember it next time. btw my soldering iron is rated at 172watts so that helped me out a lot. i had a 30w before... finally got it to work turns out there was a gap in the solder contact. took me a while to find... the rubbing alcohol saved me life lol turns out my leads were dirty too. anyways seems like the clams love the light. but not sure about the ric..might have to move him farther away. heres some pics sorry for the glare but the colors are really nice on those. thanks mastawong. might have to give the maxima to my neighbor....thats my backup plan. he has a reef tank. the clams look really nice from above but pretty brown from the side...is that why people have them in overflow tanks? Link to comment
coolwaters Posted September 15, 2008 Author Share Posted September 15, 2008 my coral might be happy with the light but im not... going to get my hands one the P7 and a crap load of those Blue LEDs. might even buy it somewhere else and get better bins. Link to comment
coolwaters Posted September 25, 2008 Author Share Posted September 25, 2008 decided to save money for more rics. anyways just went through some boxes and found 2 more Cree blue LEDs so i have 5 whites and 6 blues. making it a bit bluer. but it still didnt give me the 14k look i wanted. and at that point i found that u need an insane amount of blues (royal blue) LEDs and UV LEDs to get the 14k-20k look. im talking about 50/50 blue and white lumens. but this should keep my tank going for a while. going to china in December...probably going to give my coral to my neighbor...come back and start all over. Link to comment
coolwaters Posted September 25, 2008 Author Share Posted September 25, 2008 ok heres the pic with 2 more blue LEDs. i also used some mylar as a reflector because i was getting too much light bleed. with 2 more blue leds and mylar reflector without the mylar notice its slightly brighter but i dont get any light bleed from the tank. well not as much. Link to comment
evilc66 Posted September 25, 2008 Share Posted September 25, 2008 What are you going to China for? Link to comment
coolwaters Posted September 25, 2008 Author Share Posted September 25, 2008 vacation and my grampa's birthday. i think hes turning 70... about 30 of use are going...image in the total trip cost.... theres a 11 day tour...11 hotels, 11 restaurants, 110 places to see... December 19 is when im leaving...right after finals............ ____ anyways i moved the maxima since it jumped. pretty strong things...heard the banging from the other room.... it turns out it was attracted to the rock but i think it is now. the crocea is really happy now and well mounted. Link to comment
evilc66 Posted September 26, 2008 Share Posted September 26, 2008 Sounds like an amaizing trip. Link to comment
disaster999 Posted September 26, 2008 Share Posted September 26, 2008 i dont notice any difference between mylar and no mylar Link to comment
coolwaters Posted September 26, 2008 Author Share Posted September 26, 2008 i dont notice any difference between mylar and no mylar bad camra angle and yeah theres not much of a change...but the LEDs dont hurt my eyes anymore when i look at them from the side. Link to comment
coolwaters Posted September 26, 2008 Author Share Posted September 26, 2008 just added the UV light not going to pic yet tho since theres like 0% change.... its being powered at 350mA. with the UV alone you can barely see it. looks cool though. taking pics once its dark outside for the glowing effect. Link to comment
erickrm Posted September 26, 2008 Share Posted September 26, 2008 cool waters this is very interesting how a small area of LED is lighting up the entire tank like that!!! I have been without a tank for a while now and have been putting some equipment together for my next setup(24X24X16) was going to use T5s but i might just do the LED thing again.... i started to mess around with them about a year ago but did not continue with ordering all the LEDs and drivers from overseas, but it might be owrth it for me now since i dont have a fixture anymore lol. You guys have certainly motivated me again to try and go LED I will keep you guys posted with what i end up doing. Link to comment
coolwaters Posted September 26, 2008 Author Share Posted September 26, 2008 if your starting from scratch i suggest u ask evilc66 for the big heatsink. i hope your trying to raise low light coral or else you'll be spending hundreds for LEDs alone. 50 LEDs at at 3w each would be great for a 40g tank though. 50 LEDs X $5 each = 250... also if your looking for a deep blue 14k-ish-20k your going to need a crap load of Blue and UV LEDs. UVs are hard to find and expensive. if u got at least $350 to spend on the light then got for it =p also the tank is pretty bight because im doing almost 7watt per gallon. well over 1k lumen. the prizm light diffuser really helps. the LEDs have about 100-110 degrees light output angle and the diffuser takes it to at least 180. along with a good blend of color Link to comment
erickrm Posted September 26, 2008 Share Posted September 26, 2008 Thanks for the info bud, i guess i might be changing my mind again and rethink this project for my office tank 12" cube(LPS/sofite only....) bc my 24" cube will be mostly SPS.... I was looking into getting the 3W LED's i cant remember exactly what i had planned last year but I was trying to replicate the Solaris fixture,and i got to see the guts of one and did not look that hard. a pcb board with the LEDs attached to it, along with the lens and then the little drivers that were all linked up.... really the fixture itself was really empty lol.... biggest part was the fact that the heat sink was the entire aluminum fixture. so i was going to end up using about 15 blue 10white, and 3 uv... but this was for a tank with less depth... so i can imagine i would need twice as much now! lol. Thanks again for the input.... Link to comment
coolwaters Posted September 27, 2008 Author Share Posted September 27, 2008 u can get away with 20ish LEDs in a 24g with SPS as long as you have them a little closer up. and softies at the bottom. maybe 2 x P7 or MC-E LEDs will do just fine and those guys are around $20 now. MC-E will be around $30... personally i think 2 is enough. but your going to need a lot of blues (royal blue and UVs). cant seem to raise my color temp anymore. i even tried a 1w UV which did nothing. added 2 3w Blue LEDs. and that did pretty much nothing. might add one more... Link to comment
evilc66 Posted September 27, 2008 Share Posted September 27, 2008 Coolwaters, the UV isn't going to change the color appearance of the light, but it should fluoresce corals a little more. The biggest advantage I see with using UV is the potential healt benefits for sps. They seem to do better under lighting that is more heavily weighted in the UV spectrum (like MH). Link to comment
coolwaters Posted September 28, 2008 Author Share Posted September 28, 2008 lol yeah just noticed u can see my ric a mile away...it started out as light green with gold now its super radioactive neon green lol. its not growing as fast has i hoped but its probably fast to some people. i used T-8 and PC bulbs before and it took my other ric 2 months to split...this one is going for 1 month. Link to comment
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