TOTW 12-3-08 DIY LED Hood for Reef Tank

[Seige]

A tad off topic here: anybody ever explored UV LEDs for sterilization??? Man I better hurry and patent this stuff huh?

It's been brought up before. I'm pretty sure the biggest issue with it is that the water flow is way to fast for it to be effective.

[CharlotteSteve]

For anyone interested here is an updated picture. Steady increase of growth. Still at the end of the day the corals seem to retract before the lights go off, which I interpret as them being satisfied. The LEDs seem to be working well and I look forward to there long service.

[roblarss]

After reading the detailed information in this thread I have been inspired to make a LED hood for my new 120 gal tank.

I am planning on using luxeon rebels. I am thinking that 75 should be more than adequate. I did purchase 100 white and 25 blue since 75 white is almost the same price.

If others are interested I can post some pictures when I get moving on it. I did hook up an array of 3 parallel lines with 3 each in series. Those 9 little leds can light my entire kitchen up at night. I have them hooked to a single 1000ma buck puck @ 24 volts.

[CharlotteSteve]

Roblarss jw what is the efficiency on your driver? That was the other route I was going to take, with the pucks. Let me know how it turns out. Interesting note - I work at a Consulting Engineering company and we had a vendor come in from Philips pitching a parking lot light with LED, they actually used Cree LEDs. They claimed that they were a better product at a cheaper price. Maybe I'll reconsider for my next project. Plus Cree is made right here in good ole NC!!

[roblarss]

Im not really to sure what the efficiency if. I have changed direction slightly and now I am going to power my leds with a meanwell clg-150-24. Its a 24 volt constant current supply and it is rated for outdoor use so it will fit nicely on the back of my new hood.
I should have one shipping soon and am anxious to try it out. After looking at my puck I had I was worried about trying to enclose them in an enclosure and I still needed a powersupply to run them. the CLG-150-24 was easier. I am going to split my leds between 2 of the supplies. I am looking at using lenses for some of the leds to see if that will help them penetrate the deep water.
I did make a small flashlight with one led and 3 AA batteries and it was bright but wide scattered beam. I am going to order a few different lenses to see how they do.

[CharlotteSteve]

Yeah I used close to the same driver. It's really the cleanest power supply you can get without going medical grade. I have to warn you though, those drivers get really really hot, like 160 deg f. I can't even touch mine once it's running. IMHO I wouldn't use lens', they spotlight the tank believe it or not. Looks weird and you really don't capture that much more power. If you look at the specs on the leds, like 90-95% of the light is within 40 deg of center.

[roblarss]

Cool thats some good info about the lens', I cant wait to get my supply so I can try it out with a large amount of leds. I shone an array with 9 leds in my 60 gal reef and it looked decent so I cant wait to see what about 50 look like.... now I still have a huge pile of rough cut birch that I have to plane and cut to build the stand and hood, but thats another project.

[CharlotteSteve]

Update: had my first diode fail last week. The good news is that i ran the unit for a couple of days with the diode out while waiting for the new diodes to come in and it worked as normal. I can only figure that it was a defective diode. So while I've got the unit down for repair I wanted to exchange some whites for blues. I also ordered a couple royal blues to see the difference, which there isn't really, visually atleast. So the setup now contains 7 blues, 4 royal blues and 21 whites. IMO it looks deeper and much more coorful. I also put a peice of alum. on top of the heatsinks to "duct" the air through the entire heatsink, forced air by a fan on top. Besides that not much has changed in the sytem. The coral is consistantly growing except for the hammer coral, he lost color, he's still out though a little smaller than usual.

[DOGGIE750]

Just dove in to your pool CharlotteSteve........MEngr brother here as well. Congratz to your set up. I am in your shoe when you first started and THANK GOODNESS you got this one figured it out. CHEERS.

[CharlotteSteve]

I've been very satisfied so far with the diodes. I only wish I could control them beyond on and off....maybe dimming or being able to control the diodes individually....What kind of tank are you putting this on? I am interested in your setup too, always trying to make mine better. Maybe post some pictures or something when completed?

[DOGGIE750]

I've been very satisfied so far with the diodes. I only wish I could control them beyond on and off....maybe dimming or being able to control the diodes individually....What kind of tank are you putting this on? I am interested in your setup too, always trying to make mine better. Maybe post some pictures or something when completed?

CharlotteSteve
Have you considered using the Pot to control the LEDs.
As far as my set up, I am still debating if I should move forward on this due to lack of time with 3 babies on sight. I put a halt on my hobby after the 1st baby and it's been idle ever since. Just still lingering coz I know it will bring a smile to kid's faces once I pull the trigger.

I had 1X120G Reef, 1X100G AggFish, 1X100G Arowana, 1X100G Cube (Empty) & 1x400G (Empty). The 400G set up would be an ideal project...

[CharlotteSteve]

Depends what kind of "pot" you're speaking of. A resistive style pot will waste energy via heat, also this driver corrects the current input by monitoring the output, putting in this style pot may confuse it. I looked into getting like 555 timer chip and a pulse-width modulation pot so that I can simulate sunrise and sunset. However I am finding it hard to put together a circuit to accomplish this for two reasons. First off I am trying to push a lot of current through the pot, most pots are rated way less than an amp so finding a pot is troublesome. I found that there is not a lot research for what I am trying to do, and 99.9% of it is proprietary. Secondly I have little experience writing programs onto these chips. There are pre-written codes, but I'm still not savy enough to work it out. 400 gallons is a big project. Let me know if I can help you with any of the calcs or places to buy the stuff.

[metalhead]

After reading the detailed information in this thread I have been inspired to make a LED hood for my new 120 gal tank.

I am planning on using luxeon rebels. I am thinking that 75 should be more than adequate. I did purchase 100 white and 25 blue since 75 white is almost the same price.

If others are interested I can post some pictures when I get moving on it. I did hook up an array of 3 parallel lines with 3 each in series. Those 9 little leds can light my entire kitchen up at night. I have them hooked to a single 1000ma buck puck @ 24 volts.

Absolutely!!!

Please start a build thread when you get going!

[metalhead]

Awesome work and information Steve... I can't thank you enough for sharing this with all of us.

Tank looks great too btw!

[CharlotteSteve]

OnlineComponents.com is total crap. My driver went bad on monday, so I call onlinecomponents.com and asked them to honor the three year manufacturers warranty. In which they replied to me sorry, we only have a 21 day return policy. To which I replied I don't want to return the product I merely would like to send it back to the manufacturer for service/replacement. After repeating herself a few more times I decided to try the manufacturer. According to meanwell (manufacturer), they will only honor the warranty from the original distributor. I told her my situation with the distributor in which she replied well you should purchase one directly from us then she tells me that I have to be an approved distributor or OEM corp. to be able to purchase from them. So basically the warranty is crap because onlinecomponents.com won't send me an R/A so that I can send the driver back to meanwell. At any rate I went to JAMECO Electronics and inquired about the warranty to which they promptly sent me an email confirming that they will honor any manufacturers warranty. Guess not all websites/companies are created equal, will defiantly be a little more careful.