jcosmai5 Posted October 20, 2012 Share Posted October 20, 2012 I will be building a new 40b tank within the next year. However for this tank i would like to build most of the components myself. Reasoning behind this is I would like to open up an online store within 2 years and would like to cut on costs as much as i can. These are the components i will be using for my DIY LED setup. 12 cool white leds- white leds 24 royal blue leds- Blue leds 1 24" heatsink- Heatsink 36 80 degree optic lens This seems to be the only driver I could use- Driver I have a few very confusing questions while setting this up: How many drivers would I need in order to setup the 36 leds? Would the heatsink at 24" long give an even light spread for the 40b What other components am I missing that are vital? Power cords? extended wires? Would the use of green and uv violet leds enhance my aesthetics in the tank? Would you recommend the use of more leds or will this grow an sps dominant tank? If i use thermal adhesive I would not need a drilled and taped heatsink in order to screw down the LEDs correct? Any help would be extremely appreciative. thanks Link to comment
jcosmai5 Posted October 20, 2012 Author Share Posted October 20, 2012 Anyone help? Evil I know you would have great knowledge on this topic Link to comment
Milad LEDGroupBuy.com Posted October 20, 2012 Share Posted October 20, 2012 I will be building a new 40b tank within the next year. However for this tank i would like to build most of the components myself. Reasoning behind this is I would like to open up an online store within 2 years and would like to cut on costs as much as i can. These are the components i will be using for my DIY LED setup. 12 cool white leds- white leds 24 royal blue leds- Blue leds 1 24" heatsink- Heatsink 36 80 degree optic lens This seems to be the only driver I could use- Driver I have a few very confusing questions while setting this up: How many drivers would I need in order to setup the 36 leds? Would the heatsink at 24" long give an even light spread for the 40b What other components am I missing that are vital? Power cords? extended wires? Would the use of green and uv violet leds enhance my aesthetics in the tank? Would you recommend the use of more leds or will this grow an sps dominant tank? If i use thermal adhesive I would not need a drilled and taped heatsink in order to screw down the LEDs correct? Any help would be extremely appreciative. thanks Cool white and royal blue really not the way to go. you will be kicking yourself later What I would suggest for that tank for a clean setup for SPS is you go with: 12 Neutral White 24 XT-E Royal Blue (Top bin Q04 and much brighter than the ones you linked: http://www.ledgroupbuy.com/cree-xt-e-royal-blue-1/) 24" MakersLED heatsink http://www.ledgroupbuy.com/makersled-desig...essional-grade/ The optics are going to be determined on how high you hang the fixture. IF you are going to ohang the fixture at about 6" or less from the surface, you wont need them you also don't want to use no dimmable drivers like the one you linked. This will force you to one color and one color only. With dimmable drivers, you can fine tune how you want your tank to look. Link to comment
jcosmai5 Posted October 21, 2012 Author Share Posted October 21, 2012 Is there a reason as to why one led is more powerful than the other? What does top bin mean? Also how many drivers would i need with 32 leds? I really like the solder-less leds just because of the easy. Link to comment
Milad LEDGroupBuy.com Posted October 22, 2012 Share Posted October 22, 2012 Is there a reason as to why one led is more powerful than the other? What does top bin mean? Also how many drivers would i need with 32 leds? I really like the solder-less leds just because of the easy. driver depends on which LEDs you use. Have to narrow down your LED choice then figure out a driver. The difference in the bins is the intensity of the LEDs For instance, the lowest bin of the RB can only produce 80% of the light of the highest bin using the same amount of power. So for every 4 of the low bins, you need an additional one to make up for the intensity that you could have gotten with the higher bin leds and you end up using more power/electricity for the lower bin ones. Link to comment
uglybuckling Posted October 23, 2012 Share Posted October 23, 2012 Milad is correct in both number and ratio for a blue and white 40g breeder tank. You could also add in true violets and ocean coral whites (DR+CY+CB) and go full-spectrum. I have some plans for that over on my thread here: http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=311998 In general it works better if you use more than one driver, because then (as suggested) you can run different "chains" of LEDs (usually different colors) at different amperages and thus control their brightness relative to one another, thus being able to dial in a color temp for your tank. Link to comment
jcosmai5 Posted October 23, 2012 Author Share Posted October 23, 2012 I guess my real question would be is there a limit of how many 3 watt leds to one driver? Will the driver blow if there are too many leds on it? Link to comment
uglybuckling Posted October 23, 2012 Share Posted October 23, 2012 The limitation is voltage. Most high-end LEDs need about 3 volts. Some a little less, some a little more, but generally pretty much 3 volts. A Meanwell ELN-60-48D can supply up to 48 volts. Typically fifteen to sixteen LEDs are used as a maximum. Most drivers (including the 60-48D) have a minimum voltage as well; in that specific case you can use as few as eight LEDs (24v) but probably not fewer. Smaller drivers are available if you want to use fewer LEDs. To answer your question directly, though--the driver will not blow if you use too many, but since the LEDs are wired in series, the ones toward the end of the chain will not light, since they will be deprived of voltage by those in front of them. It is also worth noting that one (in-series) chain of LEDs will run at ONE SPECIFIC AMPERAGE and that therefore any LEDs you need to run at different amperages need to be on different chains (generally driven by different drivers unless you get fancy with the cheese whiz and start doing parallel chains). Link to comment
jcosmai5 Posted October 23, 2012 Author Share Posted October 23, 2012 Thank you so much that really helped me understand a lot more about this build. One last thing. On the driver is it the input voltage or the output voltage that determines the amount of leds? Link to comment
uglybuckling Posted October 23, 2012 Share Posted October 23, 2012 Output. Input voltage should be whatever comes out of your wall outlet (in the U.S., 120V AC power). Link to comment
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