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sandman's 40br LED build, finished


bensanders

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Yeah I enclosed mine in a canopy for that reason. I dont want my neighbors breaking into my house thinking they can steal some weed lol. And that would not e surprising in my neighborhood, trust me.

 

I live in Austin, so...I feel you on that. I let all my neighbors know what the hell this thing was so they didn't wonder.

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  • 3 months later...

Hey Sandman, mind if I steal your design? I've been playing with the idea of pods or spread and I really like the way your spread and blending looks. I'll be running this on a 40br as well :)

 

I will give you 100% credit for the design of course haha :)

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Hey Sandman, mind if I steal your design? I've been playing with the idea of pods or spread and I really like the way your spread and blending looks. I'll be running this on a 40br as well :)

 

I will give you 100% credit for the design of course haha :)

 

Actually all credit goes to Sammy. If you look at the 1st post in the thread I threw a link up to his build. I got the idea for pods from him :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Nice build.

I'm considering doing this over my 65 (24" in depth) to replace my 2x150MH + 4x39 T5 retro.

I would mount the fixture in my existing canopy which would put the lights about 4" from the surface.

 

Do ya think a clone of this fixture would work well in my situation?

And, since it's 2012 is there any different gear you would suggest?

 

I'm a total LED noob ....

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Nice build.

I'm considering doing this over my 65 (24" in depth) to replace my 2x150MH + 4x39 T5 retro.

I would mount the fixture in my existing canopy which would put the lights about 4" from the surface.

 

Do ya think a clone of this fixture would work well in my situation?

And, since it's 2012 is there any different gear you would suggest?

 

I'm a total LED noob ....

 

I wouldn't do anything differently now that it's 2012, relatively little has changed since I built this one. This would probably work well for your tank but I wouldn't hang it 4" from the surface. I have my NWs turned down literally all the way (which is actually ~5% or so) and the RBs turned down to ~45%, and the fixture is hanging about 3.5 feet above my tank. I really underestimated how powerful these LEDs are and I bleached a lot of corals in the beginning. I would have used the same size heatsink with 4 less clusters, spaced out more. Now that I've moved it away from the surface and lowered the intensity everything is happy. I even have a clam and some SPS that are perfectly content on the sand bed, which is about 5 feet from the light.

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I have my NWs turned down literally all the way (which is actually ~5% or so) and the RBs turned down to ~45%, and the fixture is hanging about 3.5 feet above my tank. I really underestimated how powerful these LEDs are and I bleached a lot of corals in the beginning.

Really? now that you say that, I'm a lot more calm about %'s in my lamp. I have 36 LEDs pretty much in the same configuration and I had my Blues at 50% and whites at 25%. Still bleached some corals though. Lenses are 60 deg and lamp is about 1.5' from water surface. I wish I could put it higher but it will blind me when I sit in my couch and watch TV. I'm thinking swapping lenses to 80 degrees and maybe lower it a few inches.

 

One of my things to do next is to get the lamp down to install some red LEDs in the middle. Gonna take advantage to tweak the SRV2 pots on each meanwell. Plan is to set them to somewere close to 500- 600mA and be able to run higher % in the controller. That way the lamp should consume even less power and the drivers run a lot cooler instead of having the Tyhpon dimming them to very low %. Does this makes any sese at all or am I crazy?

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Nice build.

I'm considering doing this over my 65 (24" in depth) to replace my 2x150MH + 4x39 T5 retro.

I would mount the fixture in my existing canopy which would put the lights about 4" from the surface.

 

Do ya think a clone of this fixture would work well in my situation?

And, since it's 2012 is there any different gear you would suggest?

 

I'm a total LED noob ....

 

Thanks for the reply. In my situation, I want to mount the array in my existing canopy which is 6" in height.

My tank also has a center brace, so, I could do a longer and wider heatsink or two separate ...hmmm

I was also considering equal , staggered, spacing with a mix of optics in the 60-80 range with fewer LED's.

OR, lol, more LED's with no optics, or a mix of both for even coverage and good par where I want.

Seems that most people end up over-killing and have to run at low % or have to hang the array way above the tank or a combination of both.

 

Lot's of possibilities .... Thanks again for the input.

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  • 5 months later...

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