Cali Kid Corals

My dream LED fixture that cracked my 12G tank

tonggao

tonggao

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Part of the reason for me to be in this hobby is that there are so many interesting toys that I can play with, and part of the fun with these toys are to make them myself. I have made a few things now. Even though they work fine, it is hard to make them NOT to look like DIY. Recently, I started 5 LED projects for all of my lights (big mistake as they take so much time, energy, and $$$). 3 of them are in canopies (for the two main display tanks) or in the stand (fuge light), one is an actinic light for an Sunpod, and the last one a complete LED light fixture for my 12G nanocube. Since this last one is a complete fixture displaying on top of the tank, I want to try to make it look as the real thing as possible. So no corner was cut and effort was saved. I finally have the unit done last weekend, and wanted to test it on my nano tank for a week to make sure it works reliably before posting it here. It almost fit perfectly and worked, but I made the mounting feet a little too tight squeezing the tank (I did not want it to fall off if someone pushed on it). This was I found myself in a pod of water on the floor and the tank glass cracked. I almost decide to just take down the tank, but looking at the custom made light, I decide to give it one more try. Thanks to Steve, after a whole day of running around, I have another nanocube up and running the same as before, except the new one has cloudy water due to new sand and is empty :(.

Too much talk, I will let the pictures show itself.

Initial parts cut to the right size (I never did so much aluminum cutting in my whole life). I want to build something with simple clean lines and solid, therefore some of these solid aluminum bars.


Everything black anodized and assembled.






Placed on the new empty new cloudy tank today. I should have taken pictures on my old tank with corals, but I never thought it would crack. So you just have to take my words for now. The color of the LED lighting just blow away my old 70w 14k MH. It has a dimmable Meanwell driver, controlled by a 1.25v-10v voltage controller made by myself using a LM317T and some resistor/pot. I currently dial it so the whole fixture only consume 30w. Given the Meanwell driver is 85% efficient, the LEDs are consuming only 25.5w. The 12 LEDs are rated for 36w, so I still have plenty of room to dial it brighter. Even with the setting it has now, it is a lot brighter than my old 70w MH.

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IMG_4092.jpg


I had a guy coming over to pick up my old MH light, and he keep on questioning me if I really made the fixture myself. So I am happy at least one person couldn't tell it is DIY. I know Phong is going to ask how much it costed, so here it goes using the assumption that my tens of hours of time and the tools I bought for this are free.
1/2" x 2 1/2" x 12" flat aluminum bar, `1/2" x 2" x 12" flat aluminum bar, and two 1" x 3 1/2" x 8 5/16" flat aluminum bars: $52
One Meanwell ELN-60-48D dimming controller: $42
Diming controller parts: ~$10
12v power supply for the diming controller: $5
7.29” x 12” medium heatsink cut into two: $35 (including shipping)
6 Cree XR-E Q5 CW LED: 6 * $5.76 = $40 (including shipping)
6 Cree XR-E RB LED: 7 * $5.76 = $40
Arctic Silver thermal compound: $12
Various aluminum bars bought from Lowes: ~$40
various stainless steel screws and miscs: $20
Anodizing: $75
Total: $371 (if I add in the cost of the water damage caused by the cracked tank because of this project, the number probably will jump a digit :().

Not cheap, but not bad at all compare to the market price. Plus the fun with this project is priceless. But honestly, I had enough fun playing with metals and electronics for a while, and it will be a drag to finish my other LED project (still two more ongoing projects).
 
Excellent job, Tong. Hey, the energy you save will pay for the light in, well, just a few.... decades. Be proud of what you've accomplished!
 
Hi Tong,

I have your bulbs but I also want you to check these out - maybe save you some time, I saw these at IMAC. Looks cool to me.

They have strips and Tiles. Here is the tile.

http://www.tmc-ltd.co.uk/aquarium/aquabeam-1000.asp

I might be able to stop sometime this week after work.
 
Thanks everyone! Especially Steve who looks out the million $$$$ for me :bigsmile: . I always wanted the million $$$$, but unless I can charge a huge price tag on this, I would go broke trying to make this ;) .

Euod, I actually have some Cree optics and used a few of them for my fuge light. The optics are not needed unless your tank is more than 18" deep and you want the light to reach that far. My nano is far less than 18" so no need. When using optics, one also need to worry about the spotty pattern due to narrowed beam.

Arnold, the lights in your link looks nice. But I wonder how they manage the heat with such a small package and thin mostly plastic fixture. The lifespan of the LEDs is a very strong inverse function of temperature, and from my experience, they do generate quite a bit of heat that need to be dissapated. I noticed that these fixtures only run at 700ma max (XR-E are rated for 1000ma) probably to reduce heat problem at the cost of less lighting, but even at 700ma, I think it will generate too much heat for such a small footprint without any active cooling. Btw, I forgot to mention most LED light out there (both comercial and DIY) use cooling fans. When I planned mine, I really do not want to put any cooling fan on it in order to give it a clean line look and have a dead quiet light. This is part of the reason for me to use these hefty aluminum bars to build the frame to hold more heat, and anodize the whole thing to give it better heat transfer. The light only run slightly warm at 1000ma. The fan behind it in the pictures is for the aquarium cooling (controlled by Reefkeeper Lite, which is off 95% of time), not for the light.
 
The look on Tong's face while he showed what he had been working on and explained to me how to work on my project, priceless. Sorry to hear the LED broke the bank, I mean tank.

Thank you for all the help. Hope to check out the new light soon.

For perspective on all the cost talk, who reading this does not feel like they are tossing coin in a wishing well? And how often do those wishes come true, like this one?
 
Ian:
The color of the LED lighting just blow away my old 70w 14k MH. It has a dimmable Meanwell driver, controlled by a 1.25v-10v voltage controller made by myself using a LM317T and some resistor/pot. I currently dial it so the whole fixture only consume 30w. Given the Meanwell driver is 85% efficient, the LEDs are consuming only 25.5w. The 12 LEDs are rated for 36w, so I still have plenty of room to dial it brighter. Even with the setting it has now, it is a lot brighter than my old 70w MH.
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Very Nice Tong...stop making me want to retrofit my sunpod :p
 
Richard, from my face, you probably can tell how much fun I was getting out of it, priceless :). Ian, I don't have a PAR meter so I can't tell for sure besides the visual description quoted in Tony's reply. If you have a PAR meter that I can borrow, I will be glad to measure it. Tony, retrofitting the Sunpod is a lot of fun, you should do it. I finished the retro LED project on my 70w Sunpod, and it came out really nice. I did not post any pic of the final product yet since it is in my office, and I do not want to invite too much suspecion on myself lugging a hunk of camera to work.

Besides this tank that is pure LED lights, all my other tanks (120G, 70G, and 12G) will be retrofitted with LED actinic lights on top of the original MH. I decided to only use this tank as a pilot project for 100% LED and kept MH for all other tanks since I have not read much long term successful stories with SPS like acros so far, and do not want to risk my corals just for my excitement.

Again, thanks everyone for your encouragement.
 
I left the orginal lights unchanged, and retro fitted 6 CREE XR-E royal blues that mount nicely on the two sides of the MH using the leg mounting slots. I did not want to swap out of MH since I have acros in this tank, and I have not read much long term successful story with LEDs on acros yet. Here is the thread without the final product shown: http://www.bareefers.org/home/node/8111. I have the retro part black anodized also, and it blend in with the fixture very well. I was only going to mount 4 LEDs on it to start with since I was worried about the heat more LEDs will generate, and I did not want to run a fan for it. After connecting the 4 LEDs to the Meanwell lpc-20-700 (spec says 700ma between 3v and 30v), I keep on having 1, 2, and 3 dead LEDs, and I could not figure out what went wrong until I burnt out 9 LEDs (there goes $50 :() before I figured out the Meanwell driver spec is probably wrong, and the minimum number of LEDs it need to drive is more than 4. So I ended up mounting 6 LEDs on the rail, which worked well with the driver, but did generate too much heat without a fan. So I ended up running a fan whenever the LEDs turn on. I love the royal blue LED/MH color combo. The lesson learnt here is don't trust the manufacture spec., and it is always a good idea to run the drivers close to their capacity. This probably gives better efficiency for the driver anyway.
 
Soooo Bright! :D Looks fantastic. I can't wait to see future coral pics to see how they do under that lighting. :) I envy all you DIYers. :)
 
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