need ideas for 96" LED build

[jayinh]

OK so i am pronly going to start a new tank after the new year and need some help from the LED gods.... the tank is going to be a glass cages 106 gallon custom with demensions of 96"x16"x16". here are the things i dont know about?

1: how many LED's, probly going to do a 2:1 (blue/white)
2: how to wire all them together
3: how many and what drivers
4: should i use a lens on each LED
i would like to have all the blues dimm seperate from all the whites if possible. the tank will house a mixed reef style of corals. i did build a LED setup on my 12g nano and that was pretty simple as i just followed what others had already done, this is a bit larger and i am not sure how to wire this many LED's up!
thanks for any input

p.s. whats the scoop on glasscages? i seem to remember good and bad story's


jay

 

[Flame Angel]

I am bumping this, because I am interested in the subject and may need to build my own.

 

[DoctaQ]

something in the range of probably 160 leds, interpolate it from other larger builds. if you went with meanwells you would need something like 14 meanwells, to use the full capacity of the meanwells you would probably end up running 180 leds, it would probably be a waste to use 14 meanwells as it would be crazy expensive, maybe look into more powerful drivers or creating your own drivers and running off of a 48v power supply and use 4-6 meanwells just to dim whites, you could possibly get away with no optics or using 80 or 60 deg optics

 

[sciknen]

Same as the smaller buils just with more LEDs.. no need for a heat sink.. just you a sheet of alm. And wire them the same way the smaller ones do and you can easily wire them separate. only 16" deep no need for lenses I would say.

 

[kevinpratt823]

Anybody who is seriously interested in doing it is welcome to PM me to come check out what I've done/learned.
Meanwell 60-48 series can power up to 26 led's each, there are a couple others that will power many more, but only one that is still remotely dimmable. You prob wouldn't need optics, but there are ups and downs to that. Without them, you could space the led's farther apart and it would still blend well, but it also will put a lot of light on the glass, helping algae grow. Optics will keep the light off the glass, but may make it too intense for a shallow tank.

 

[jayinh]

thanks for all the great info, how hard is it to build a driver?

 

[DoctaQ]

non dimmable- not very hard at all, a dimmable one is a little more complicated, involving reference voltages and sometimes smt parts

 

[jayinh]

is there a way to build one driver thats non dimmable to run about 150 led's? probly like a few just mounted on the same board? are there any good diy threads? also whith the tank only being 16" deep would it make more sense to use a 1w LED ?
thanks

 

[Bobbofin]

In live in Merrimack and built one. Would you like to come down and look at mine and get some instructions? It's a 36 LED unit with 3 Mean Wells 60-48 drivers over a 24 x 24 x 24" 60 gallon cube. It's plenty bright! I can take it off the tank explain design and layout. Shoot me a PM.

 

[DoctaQ]

if you want to go all out for diy and price build a transistor based driver (or actually 20 of them) and use the same 24v potrans 6A power supply you used for your biocube you can run up to 6000ma total each. i suggest you go at least half dimmable so you can adjust color temp, throwing in a few warm whites and cool blues is the new rage as it brings out more colors than the standard royal blue and cool whites and is much more practical on such a large tank.

i would probably do something like 14 transistor based driving 6 royal blues each to 700ma on two power supplies (this should cost you something in the range of 60 dollars)
then something like 5-6 meanwells running cool whites which would cost something like 150-200, you could bring the cost down a bit by running two strings of leds in a parallel grid per driver and upgrading to either xm-l or xp-g for the leds and use 3 meanwells which might come out to under 100.

for the transistor based driver you can look at the ultimate led thread on NR or look my name up on aquariacentral as i have a terrible led write up there that includes the driver
the driver only costs about 1-2 dollars each to build, if you can source meanwells to drive that many leds for cheaper let me know i havent found anything but havent looked very hard either

 

[Bobbofin]

You could easily light that tank with 2 40" fixtures, 60 LEDs on each, 5 rows of 16 spaced at 2.25" each. 120 LEDs with 80° would be perfect. I'm lighting a 24" x 24" cube with a 14" x 14" with 36 XRE LEDs spaced at 2.25" with 80° optics. There's no dark spots or banding of colors(see seperate white or blue rays). I'd use Cree XRE and Mean Well ELN 60-48 drivers. This is going to be expensive, $300 for 10 drivers alone plus LEDs, heatsinks, fans and hardware. I estimate $1500 but your savings over MH or T5 in electricity and bulb replacement will have you re-coop this cost in several years. I estimated my retrun on a $450 investment to be 2-1/2 years. I'll then have 7-1/2 years of life left with no bulb changes and great energy savings. Gonna PM you my cell #. If you would like to see the unit and get some build tips I'm available.

 

[jayinh]

You could easily light that tank with 2 40" fixtures, 60 LEDs on each, 5 rows of 16 spaced at 2.25" each. 120 LEDs with 80° would be perfect. I'm lighting a 24" x 24" cube with a 14" x 14" with 36 XRE LEDs spaced at 2.25" with 80° optics. There's no dark spots or banding of colors(see seperate white or blue rays). I'd use Cree XRE and Mean Well ELN 60-48 drivers. This is going to be expensive, $300 for 10 drivers alone plus LEDs, heatsinks, fans and hardware. I estimate $1500 but your savings over MH or T5 in electricity and bulb replacement will have you re-coop this cost in several years. I estimated my retrun on a $450 investment to be 2-1/2 years. I'll then have 7-1/2 years of life left with no bulb changes and great energy savings. Gonna PM you my cell #. If you would like to see the unit and get some build tips I'm available.

i would love to check out your tank in the future, i will probly take you up on the offer after the new year if thats cool. thanks for the idea on the build. are your meanwells dimmable?

 

[Bobbofin]

Manaully dimmable not 0-10vdc dimmable. I have the plain vanilla Mean Well ELN 60-48 drivers, not the "D" version.