my custom led build for 125g tank

[Deep Dive Coral]

hey everyone i ordered my new soldering station and fans for the heatsinks. also received the screws and washers today. i should be getting the heatsinks and the flat selftapping screws tomorrow and then comes the fabrication part. start laying out the fram to the heatsinks. pictures will be here tomorrow when the heatsinks arrive.

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

i odered my controllers they will be here in about 3 weeks. i got a guy building them and adding the code that i want all in one deal.... pritty sweet price too. 70$ for 2 controllers.

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

http://www.cdiweb.com/
if you want to call here is the phone number. 800-303-6440 ext.4130. the womans name is kristi goldberg. really nice woman.

Where did you buy the drivers from? I'll need 4 more soon of the D versions.
If you drill, get the self tapping screws. You need to get an exact match between the drill bit and the self tapping screws, otherwise the head of the screw will just pop off if its too tight. You still should use epoxy when tapping, just not the adhesive epoxy. The adhesive will harden up and will be very hard to remove if you ever need to replace or want to swap out LED colors.
Since you have a 125, which standard is 5 foot long with 2 center braces, I would separate it out into 3 fixtures, so 40 bulbs each fixture (You can actually run 13 on each driver so I would probably do 39 bulbs each fixture to save money and time on drivers, 5 rows of 8 LED's with the very center bulb missing)

 

[CDANN76]

Ahh very good info on the drivers thanks..

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

np. there will a bunch of pics tomorrow night with the heat sinks and the start of the fabrication of the frame.

 

[NL146]

Have you gotten your leds yet? What's the site you got them from?

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

ordered them and they have been sent out. im getting them from hong kong so they wont be here for another 2 weeks at the minimum. i got them through a ebay wholesaler.

 

[btldreef]

^cheaper then rapidled.com? please share? what controllers are you using? sorry i just want to see other options before i purchase my retro kit from rapidled.com

 

[rkaragozler]

me too

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

i just received my heatsinks in today.
here are some pictures:

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

btldreef and rkaragozler i paid 3.50$ per led aproximately. 550 for all 72 leds straight from HK (hong kong). much cheaper then anywhere i have seen.

 

[qy7400]

$3.50 per LED for CREEs, that's a great price as everywhere else is almost double with the focal lens. These are mounted to the star and not loose bulk?

 

[regal]

Well, you need to be very careful about ordering cree from an unknown source. I hope you didn't order them from Not My Hero internet store, don't want to name names. The royal blue cree from a recent group buy at the other site turned south bc the royal blue leds from them don't have the same color bin as the typical one you get from like rapidled. They are off so much that they look more like a greenish-blue leds and are useless for our purpose if you use them alone with CW. If they are indeed blue cree instead, you can experiment by mixing them with royal blue and see if you like the color better than the typical CW and RB mix (becasue the blue leds are supposed to supplement the lack of cyan spectrum of the CW/RB mix).

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

i will show pics of the leds once i get them.
i started building the frame. will show pics in a little bit

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

qy7400 nope to the star and everything.

 

[regal]

i will show pics of the leds once i get them.
i started building the frame. will show pics in a little bit

You won't be able to tell the difference in the color bin of cree just by looking at the led stars. You have to run them in your tank and have someone familiar with the color of royal blue look at it if you have any doubts before you finish your whole array.

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

frame

frame with 1st heat sink in place

i definately will test it out i have a cree RB from ledsupply and i will compare.

 

[TimberTDI]

The link to nanoreef shows that you are going to wire the leds parallel. Are you intentionally wiring them this way? You should go in series.

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

Thanks timber for the heads up. I have changed my design to series. I will be working on it some more tonight depending on if I have work or not.

 

[BobNY]

How's the build going?
Would love to see a progress update and maybe some pictures.