planted tank diy led retrofit 20 gallon

[DoctaQ]

i know i been a lot of talk and not a lot of production so here it is, all done in one day, well, about 5 hours, but that also included dinner and a rare bit of bioshock. without further ado

i was going to use 6 xp-gs instead of the older xr-e, but aside from the group buy taking forever, i figured they could be put to better use elsewhere, since i am probably not going to need it to run at full power anyways.
the leds are driven by a buckpuck, the easiest dimmable led driver to use IMO and feeds off of the same power source as my reef.

i had a 30 inch coralife PC fixture that my friend gave me, thanks maeve! that had a 24 inch 55w bulb fitting, this did not produce very even light throughout the tank
so here we go then..

taking it apart here, the metal plate i ordered fit almost exactly, which made my job a whole lot easier, i used a metal plate instead of a giant heatsink because of the number of leds over a huge area(relativeley)


i cut a piece of egg crate to protect each led as i compressed the leds and heatsinks on the back with an aluminum plate sandwich for a tight bond with thermal expoxy.


went with a seperate power supply here for a 5v fan, much quieter, the idea was that i could also use the same power supply to add two more leds if i wanted.



area above the black line is all that could be used for leds











wow my glass is lookin pretty dirty and that oil slick is still there, i dunno why.

i only looked at it for a while since it was late and i didnt want my fish to go crazy but the coverage was much better as far as i could tell, i do need more time to analyze it though, tomorrow. ill get back with more.
it would be cool to have shimmer in this tank but with the whole co2 and surface disturbance and all that jazz i guess ill just settle with seeing a little ripple when a cory comes up for air.

more pics and stuff tomorrow, im tired

 

[DoctaQ]

i got a little better look at it this morning, i dont know if its me, and maybe its because im not used to seeing shadows in the tank but this fixture doesnt seem like everything i hoped for, coverage seems to suffer towards the front.

 

[excuzzzeme]

I'm wondering if more LED's are called for since the coverage area per LED is smaller. I like the idea and wonder about the need for cooling since they run so much cooler and generate very little heat.

 

[DoctaQ]

i think its more so the issue of spacing here since the display area of a coralife single bulb fixture is so small, look how big my plate is and how little of the area i was able to use, if i were somehow able to mount this fixture up higher then i could possibly add leds right to the same place and it would still light the whole area, however as it is right now, an easier fix would be to possibly run leds right on the surface of the fixture, it sounds kinda radical to me but time will tell

 

[excuzzzeme]

You might want to contact "247Plants" as he has done quite a few LED projects and could offer insight.

 

[DoctaQ]

the standard layout of this for a reef would call for 20 but since we dont need blues here 10 should suffice and i might try but it wouldnt cost much more for me to do 12 but im trying to keep the sleek layout of the fixture here

 

[DoctaQ]

i am quite sure now, i am going to go with 3 more in a back row mounted right to the shell, time to order more

 

[Sploke]

What is the angle of dispersion for those particular LEDs? It might be as easy as adding lenses over the LEDs to disperse the light more evenly.

 

[DoctaQ]

leds with no optics have the widest angle, about 100 deg i beleive, the problem here is that bewteen the height of the plate mounted inside and the narrow range the light has to escape it comes out in a beam almost, but like i said, i still havent had a good chance to study the light that comes out. on the same token, i would like to put those 3 in the back to further increase the light spread

 

[DoctaQ]

aw yeah, i did it, i added two more leds in the back, connected directly to the fixture exterior and had a heatsink opposite, wow, it made all the difference in the world, i am satisfied with it now. i guess the whole thing could have been covered with 6 leds but as a stand alone fixture, unless maybe you are retrofitting a two bulb fixture with a bigger viewing area, or unless you could mount the leds with no splash shield sticking out of the fixture.