My ATI Sunpower T5/LED Hybrid - with PAR measurements as well

[Sahin]

OK, here are the PAR measurements of my ATI Sunpower HYBRID 5x24watt T5 and 24 Cree LED's @ 700mA (approx 60watts). 20 of the LED's have 80degree lens, the remaining 4 have 60degree lens.

 

The tank is 18" tall, 30" long and 20" front to back. The water height is 16" from top of sand to water surface.

 

Excuse the bad quality of the photo. For some silly reason I took the photo at an angle, but here goes:

 

Some notes about the various numbers:

 

1. PAR measurements were made using the Apogee MQ-200 PAR Quantum meter. This meter underreads the PAR from narrow spectrum LED's (mainly in the blue section) by around 10-20%, so my PAR levels are probably a fair bit higher.

 

2. The T5 tubes, bar the actinic tube, are about 5 months old. When I put in new tubes I expect the PAR levels to increase slightly.

 

3. The light unit is suspended 7.5" above the waters surface. If I mount it lower, PAR levels get too high causing bleaching due to photoinhibition.

 

4. Numbers in RED are PAR readings on the SAND. The 175, 265,175 are right against the FRONT glass. 175's are in the extreme corners. The 390-A is the PAR in the centre of the tank on the sand bed.

 

5. PAR levels 1" below the unit are in excess of 2500!!!

 

6. PAR numbers just below the surface of the water is around 1100!

 

I am extremely impressed with this light modification. Since the purchase of the PAR meter, I have been looking at various PAR measurements carried out by other hobbyists and it appears that the PAR levels are in similar range to 400watt halide systems. All in all, I am very happy with the PAR levels and the possibility of supplying very good spectral quality via the use of various T5 tube combinations.

 

The unit has the following T5 Tubes/LED front to back:

 

Front:

ATI Blue+

ATI AquaBlue Special

Cree XR-E LED's: 20 x Royal Blue + 4 x Blue

KZ FijiPink

Arcadia 420nm 03 Actinic

ATI Blue+

 

The actual look of the tank is not as blue as the photo. It is a very nice 20K look.

 

Some photos during building:

 

Not content with modding my ATI Sunpower with high power LED's I decided to add LED "moonlights" as well:

 

A shot showing the "moonlights" in use:

 

Hope you enjoyed reading this.

[Dr.eclipse]

sweet write up. great mod

[Nano12greef]

Looks pretty sweet! Did you see a difference in the colors of the corals at all?

[GiantBen]

I'm curious what this ran you. Especially with the new Orphek LED bulbs coming out.

[SouthFlorida_Tron]

Lol hawthorn light, love it, that's y I ordered one from nano tuners, but also cuz I don't want it to look anything like that!!! (wires lawls)

[tako]

Lol hawthorn light, love it, that's y I ordered one from nano tuners, but also cuz I don't want it to look anything like that!!! (wires lawls)

Looks nice and clean to me. Just a handful of neatly ran wires inside the light fixture. Why would you be staring into the underside of your light, anyway? The additional wires leaving the fixture could be put in some braided wire wrap and it will look completely professional.

[Sahin]

sweet write up. great mod

Thanks.

 

Looks pretty sweet! Did you see a difference in the colors of the corals at all?

I did the mod as soon as I got the light. So I never ran T5 only on this tank. If I turn off the LED's, I get way less flourescence and the overall look isnt as nice though.

 

I'm curious what this ran you. Especially with the new Orphek LED bulbs coming out.

The thing is, I bought this brand new for £135 (about $190US) excluding shipping. These units cost £290 (about $420 US) here in the UK. I got it less than half price because it had non working fans. The fans wouldnt work because the wiring was faulty from the factory, it took me 20 minutes to figure that out with a meter and correct it. So, £135 + £110 for LED parts = £235 or $338US.

 

So, even with the LED mod, it cost me less than what a new 6x24w would have cost.

 

A similar Orphek LED unit (ie the Orphek PR-156w) costs £749 here in the UK , thats about $1080 US. The Orphek units run too many white LED's and so the colour doesnt look as nice to me personally. The new Orphek PAR bulbs do look good, but I dont like the look of 3 or 4 bulbs things over my tank. I prefer a light unit.

 

Lol hawthorn light, love it, that's y I ordered one from nano tuners, but also cuz I don't want it to look anything like that!!! (wires lawls)

Most of the wiring is hidden under the ATI reflectors, and in any event once its over the tank, you cant even see the underside to be able to see the wires. There is only about 7 inches of wires coming out before its hidden behind the tank. It doesnt draw my attention to be honest or else I would have covered the individual wires with a braid of some sort. Most DIY LED units I have seen have such wiring appearance on the underside anyway, but this looks neat enough once the Sunpower is all fitted up.

 

Apart from the wires coming out (which run the LED's), with the Sunpower over the tank, you cannot tell that it has been modded or that it looks unsightly.

 

Looks nice and clean to me. Just a handful of neatly ran wires inside the light fixture. Why would you be staring into the underside of your light, anyway? The additional wires leaving the fixture could be put in some braided wire wrap and it will look completely professional.

 

Thanks man.

[Urchinhead]

This is bloody brilliant mate! Was it hard to fit the PUC's in there? Any tips on how to do it? Reason I ask is I am going to go with the 8 bulb 48" dimmable from ATI but still wanted to use a bit of LED. I am thinking pull one of the bulbs like you did and wire it up similar will give me the best of both worlds...

 

I also notice you did 3 clusters of five then four extras. Why did you do that? And what are your combinations on there? And where did you wire the moonlights to? Separate PDU or on the same chassis and I am just missing it in the picture?

[Sahin]

This is bloody brilliant mate! Was it hard to fit the PUC's in there? Any tips on how to do it? Reason I ask is I am going to go with the 8 bulb 48" dimmable from ATI but still wanted to use a bit of LED. I am thinking pull one of the bulbs like you did and wire it up similar will give me the best of both worlds...

 

I also notice you did 3 clusters of five then four extras. Why did you do that? And what are your combinations on there? And where did you wire the moonlights to? Separate PDU or on the same chassis and I am just missing it in the picture?

 

Thank you for the compliment.

 

Not sure what you mean by PUC? The LED drivers are externally located. The LED's are mounted onto an Aluminium plate.

 

I doubt you will be able to do this with the Powermodule - hence why I didnt buy it. There is no space for anything inside the powermodule. Taking one apart is very difficult. The factory just about gets everything fitted inside. It is that tight inside the powermodule.

 

Have a look at this photo:

 

There are 4 clusters of 5 LED's with 4 LED's in bwteen the clusters.

 

The reason I made clusters is because the centre LED inside each cluster is a Blue LED, ie there are 4 Royal Blues around it. The Centre most T5 units usually has the most PAR hence you will notice the clusters are space towards the sides of the unit. So the Blue+Royal Blue blend in, and also provide maximum PAR.

,

The moonlight is just 4 x 5mm blue LED's running of a 300mA adaptor. They are not part of the main LED circuits.

[Urchinhead]

Cheers.

 

Ah, no. Sorry. My bad. I should have typed sunpower not powermodule. The PM's in the US are not dimmable and the SP's are hence I am going sunpower. Plus its about 1/2 the price of the PM. Had one before, beautiful unit, but not what I am looking for now.

 

Thank you. Got it. One blue four royal. Interesting. Were you looking for heavy blue? And the four stand alone ones? Are they also blue?

 

A PDU is a power supply. Sorry about the confusion. So you mount the LED's to a aluminum plate, then glued the plate to the underside? Are you relying on the fans from the unit to cool it or did you mod the internals as well? From looking at your photos I see one green/red pair of wires unterminated but trying to trace back the wiring from the lights it looks like it just goes external and doesn't connect to anything inside the chassis...

 

Sorry to be a bother but you are doing exactly what I want to do to mine but I want to make sure I do it right and not bugger it.

[Sahin]

Cheers.

 

Ah, no. Sorry. My bad. I should have typed sunpower not powermodule. The PM's in the US are not dimmable and the SP's are hence I am going sunpower. Plus its about 1/2 the price of the PM. Had one before, beautiful unit, but not what I am looking for now.

 

Thank you. Got it. One blue four royal. Interesting. Were you looking for heavy blue? And the four stand alone ones? Are they also blue?

 

A PDU is a power supply. Sorry about the confusion. So you mount the LED's to a aluminum plate, then glued the plate to the underside? Are you relying on the fans from the unit to cool it or did you mod the internals as well? From looking at your photos I see one green/red pair of wires unterminated but trying to trace back the wiring from the lights it looks like it just goes external and doesn't connect to anything inside the chassis...

 

Sorry to be a bother but you are doing exactly what I want to do to mine but I want to make sure I do it right and not bugger it.

 

Even though all the LED's are blue, the tanks look is that of a 20K as I have two Blue+, one Actinic (which doesnt colour up anything that much, but does create flourescence), one white tube and a Fijipink. The T5's throw out enough photons in the other wavelengths to adequately balance the blues.

 

Have a look at this photo:

You can see that I was testing with differant VGA card fans to see which would fit etc etc inside the canopy. Also notice that the Aluminium plate is mounted on the side with the T5 Ballasts.

 

Notice in this photo that there is a huge cutout of the actual ATI chassis so that I could mount the LED's onto:

You cannot mount the LED's onto the metal chassis as the thermal transfer is around 1/20 to that of Aluminium, so for cooling purposes you would need to cut up your brand new ATI Sunpower.

As you can see from the previous photo, the heatsink/fans are mounted directly onto the Aluminium plate.

 

Note that I have to run the ATI cooling fans at 12volts in order to expel the heat generated by the LED's - and they DO GENERATE QUITE A BIT OF HEAT. If you ran the fans lower, it will cause the LED's to heat up too much, and the T5 tubes would run warmer directly impacting the TOTAL PAR quite badly.

 

Now notice that the Sunpower unit has TWO cooling fans for 6x24w T5 tubes. If your unit is going to be say for a much larger/longer T5 unit, I dont think the two little fans will be good enough to adequately cool the T5 tubes and the LED's. So if you have 5x54watt tubes, that is 270watts as opposed to 120watts in my unit to be cooled by the two fans. Dont also forget that with a longer unit you will need more LED's, hence more LED's to cool.

 

So, once you consider all the cooling requirements, it gets very tricky...unless of course you go for a 24watt unit then you should be fine as long as you run the fans at full power.

 

If it were for the fact that I got my Sunpower unit so cheap, and that it is a small unit, I probably would have gone a complete T5/LED DIY route. If I ever upgrade to a larger tank I will certainly go the complete DIY route.

 

Not trying to put you off, but making you aware of the cooling requirements. I'm sure as Evil will point out, cooling these LED's takes some good use of adequate heatsink mass and or adequate active cooling.