90 Bridgelux LED, ELN-Ds, c-channel heat sink - Page 4

NickC5FE · 05/04/2012, 03:55 PM

Yeah,you can

SchnitzelReef · 05/05/2012, 12:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NickC5FE

My setup is this, on a 20" long heatsink by 8 inches wide. Blue=RB, Grey=10k, Yellow=6.5k. What do you guys think? I will not be running optics on the 10k, or the outside RB's (3 eash side), because the tank is 30" wide. Thanks

oops- the one RB on the lower right corner shoulld be 6.5 (yellow)= Typo

Depending on how high, and which optics u choose to go with I would recommend not setting it up this way. Even with my 90 leds spread very far apart i can see the 4500 and the 10000k leds when the optics are on. They stand out pretty bad. I had to take the optics off so they would blend better. IMO mixing the leds is alot safer. With the DIY part of leds, there are so many different factors that change each kit, That setup might work out great for u but i would be worried that it wont blend and u will end up seeing the diff colors :/ good luck

C5flyboy · 05/05/2012, 08:38 AM

This is the preliminary layout i came up with. I'm not sure how this layout would perform or if it is mixed enough to provide a thorough blend of the colors. Any helpful critiques and suggestions anybody has would be great. the dimensions are roughly 21"x13". The five moon lights will be ran at a pretty low intensity due to the number, I just needed at least that many bulbs on the driver so I don't fry the bulbs. I may be wrong about that as well so please critique critique critique!!

andrewbram · 05/05/2012, 09:10 AM

So I have a 125 6ft long 18 wide it will be mostly sps do you think 72 led will be enough and what optics. Led will be about 8 inches off water final ? Are drivers plug and play or do you adjust driver for amount of leds. Tia!!!!

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

SchnitzelReef · 05/08/2012, 03:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by C5flyboy

This is the preliminary layout i came up with. I'm not sure how this layout would perform or if it is mixed enough to provide a thorough blend of the colors. Any helpful critiques and suggestions anybody has would be great. the dimensions are roughly 21"x13". The five moon lights will be ran at a pretty low intensity due to the number, I just needed at least that many bulbs on the driver so I don't fry the bulbs. I may be wrong about that as well so please critique critique critique!!

Setup looks nice, but u will most def have to dimm your whites. Since I have setup my Lights and messed around with diff settings, I have my whites at like 50% or less. And that's with a 2:1 ratio. I think in going to recommend 3:1 from now on. Especially on smaller tanks, the whites are super bright.

Sent from my iPhone

SchnitzelReef · 05/08/2012, 03:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewbram

So I have a 125 6ft long 18 wide it will be mostly sps do you think 72 led will be enough and what optics. Led will be about 8 inches off water final ? Are drivers plug and play or do you adjust driver for amount of leds. Tia!!!!

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

I'm no expert with SPS, as a matter of fact I just added about $250 worth of SPS frags in the last week and so far so good. I did a test with 3 diff types of SPS and they did great for about 3 months so now it's time for the real deal. I also just setup my Ca reactor last night, that was exciting. Anyways IMO I would say 72 will be plenty for a 125. If u wanted to be extra safe and have a full spectrum setup i would consider 90. Worst case you can just dimm them down. There are diff drivers that will work, do some research, they were a little tricky to figure out. If ur running an Apex make sure to get the ELN D drivers, as they are 0-10v analog dimming signal. If u want to dimm manually, then go with the reg maxwellen. Good luck

Sent from my iPhone

Zoanut · 05/08/2012, 03:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by C5flyboy

This is the preliminary layout i came up with. I'm not sure how this layout would perform or if it is mixed enough to provide a thorough blend of the colors. Any helpful critiques and suggestions anybody has would be great. the dimensions are roughly 21"x13". The five moon lights will be ran at a pretty low intensity due to the number, I just needed at least that many bulbs on the driver so I don't fry the bulbs. I may be wrong about that as well so please critique critique critique!!

I would go with more 4500k, the 10,000k tend to drown out the RB.

andrewbram · 05/08/2012, 07:52 PM

Hey thank you for the reply. I am actually gonna get reef angel because I think it dim both. Good luck on the sticks they are addictive.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

NickC5FE · 05/08/2012, 07:57 PM

I hooked my wife's LEDs up and wow, they look great! Over her 20 gallon long, I have 24 on a 20 inch x 7inch HS. 16 RB, 6-6500 and 2-10K. All RB are on 80 degree optics, and all whites have no optics. I have the whites turned down to around 50 percent, and the RB up around 75 percent. It is a great 16k-ish color. Also, the lights are 8 inches off the tank. I will be looking to get some type of cheaper LED controller for her, but for right now, on/off is OK.

C5flyboy · 05/08/2012, 10:22 PM

Well The final set up I went with is 26RB, 5 10000k, 7 6500k, and 2 4500k. I have some extra spaces in the frame if more of any color or another color is wanted if the future. I got all the lights mounted and tinned. I'll get a pic tomorrow. Schnitzelreef and Nick thanks for all the help and advice, it has been much appreciated. I am going to be using the typhoon controller from Boost LED and so far seems really easy to set up and get going, we'll see how it works with lights hooked up to it in a day or two!

Nick I'll keep you updated on how this controller works in case you want to get a controller of some type for E in the future. Though you have to use the P series controllers not the D series. I'm pretty sure the ones you have are D series from Aquastyle but I'll keep you up to date anyway. Oh and Nick E's tank looks pretty sweeeeet under those LEDs bro!

C5flyboy · 05/08/2012, 10:43 PM

couldn't wait for tomorrow to post a pic of my progress so far. I'm kind of proud of myself having never done something like this before. Schnitzelreef, I took your advice and used the C-channel aluminum and built the frame work out of it. I used rivets to fasten the rows into place. I cut 90 degree V's into a single piece of C-channel where each of the corners should be and bent the corners into place and touched the seams up with JB weld to hold it in place. Should have it wired up tomorrow and hopefully tested. If I get it lit up tomorrow I'll some pics!

NickC5FE · 05/09/2012, 04:53 AM

Looks good man!

C5flyboy · 05/09/2012, 10:02 PM

So here is this afternoons events: Got all the LEDs wired up (found out my soldering skills are pretty terrible at best

). Opened up all the drivers and turned them all the way down. Didn't get them set to the right output cause my multi meter has seemed to walk away. I connected all the wires to the 4 channels on the Typhoon controller and wanted to see if the lights would even turn on(I know, probably not the smartest thing to do. Remember Nick I'm not good with electricity) Anyway I turned everything on and thought I selected manual mode but selected all on instead..Oops! I got everything turned off and selected manual mode and turned it up to 10% and nothing except a quick flash. Went to 11% and one channel lit up. At about 13 % another channel kicked in. At 20% the third and fourth channels kicked. The manual mode runs all four channels at the same time.
At this point I decided to run them up a bit and slowly went to 50%. I noticed two lights weren't working (each on different channels). I wanted to see how bright the lights would get so slowly started ramping them up some more and at about the 70ish% range one of the channels started to flash so I brought them back down and I stopped. I wanted to test this so I turned them back up and on of the other channels flashed so I turned them off and stopped for the night.
My questions are do any of you know what (other than my great electrical skills) is causing the flashing? and on the controller there are two sets of four channels: One is 0-10V and the other is 0-5V. I was plugged into the 0-10V, should I have been plugged in to the 0-5Vchannel set instead?

SchnitzelReef · 05/09/2012, 11:58 PM

0-10v is the correct one

C5flyboy · 05/10/2012, 11:56 AM

Any idea as to the flahsing? If I'm not using big enough wire from the drivers to the lights, could that cause the lights to be comming on at different percentages instead of all at the same time? I'm using about 4-5 feet of wire between the driver and the lights so I can mount them behind my stand. Could I be loosing that much power in that stretch of wire, and if so could that be causing all the issues?

C5flyboy · 05/10/2012, 03:20 PM

It's alive!!!!! So I sat all morning thinking with my limited electrical skills and thought about the size wire that I was using from the Drivers to the LEDs and how much power it was loosing. So during lunch I went home and cut 36" strands of 16ga wire and spliced them in and also re-soldered the two lights that weren't working and set the drivers and like magic everything worked! I ran it all the way up to 100% and not a single flash or anything just blazing bright LEDs. I don't know how anyone can badmouth these Bridgelux lights cause they are crazy bright! I'll be putting the frame into the canopy tonight and will post some pics tomorrow! Thanks for all the help

SchnitzelReef · 05/15/2012, 12:58 AM

sweet, glad to hear it all worked out for u! post some pics i def wanna see it!

RonMidtownStomp · 05/15/2012, 01:36 AM

How hot does your C-Channel get without fans? I'm testing mine for the first time and it's too hot to touch after about 5 minutes. I'm concerned that my "Raytek MT4 Mini Temp Non-Contact Thermometer Gun with Laser Sighting" (Amazon) might not work correctly under aquarium lighting. It's reading 120F, but I think it's much hotter. Thoughts?

C5flyboy · 05/15/2012, 10:15 PM

Here is the finished LED fixture and some some pics of it in action!! I'm really pleased with them thus far. Still trying to get the Typhoon dialed in right and I think I'm going to rewire them and put some of the whites on the blue channels and vice versa so when the lights are comming on and dimming down it doesn't look like blue fountain water in my tank. I figure that way I would have a better mix than all whites on a channel and all blues on the others. More to come on that. The next addition to the tank will be an anemone for the clowns. Still need to do some more research into to exactly what type I want to get. So for now I'm going to enjoy my new lights!!!

Commandoe · 05/16/2012, 12:04 PM

Just found this post and its very good! Can you help/direct me in choosing what would be best for my application? I have a 240g acrylic tank, 8X2X2 ft. I need 3 - 24 inch fixtures! I don’t want them to hang but sit on lid of tank which makes them 3-3 1/2 inches from water surface! Please tell me what number of LED’s, the color ratio of LEDs and lenses you would recommend for per fixture?

C5flyboy · 05/16/2012, 01:43 PM

I can tell you that going with the aluminum C-channel that you can get at Lowes or home depot in either 8 or 10 foot pieces, I don't remember exactly what size, but that will allow you to build one fixture for your tank. You will probably want to put some sort of support legs on it as well to raise it up off the tank a little more than that. The ideal distance or the water from the research I did for my build is 6-8 inches. My fixture is somewhere between 7-8 inches off the water and it is bright all the way to the bottom and my lights are only at 80% and are BRIGHT. The ratio of blue to white really depends on what overall look you are going for like 10k, 14k, 20k in the metal halide world. A good rule of thumb that was told to me was a 2:1 blue to white. Scnitzelreef chime in here on actual color ratio for the whites, you are far smarter on that than I am. I would highly recommend the Bridgelux LEDs. They are a little cheaper and are every bit as good as Cree or any other brand. By all means shop around and do some research and choose the brand that you are comfortable with though, I can only give you my opinion. My tank is under Bridgelux LEDs.

As far as actual number of LEDs I would think you are going to be looking in the 150ish range. You may also want to, depending on your own personal tastes and wants at this point, look into putting some cyans and maybe a couple of greens into the mix. If you have never done this before I would stick with white and blue to start with then you can tweak over time to really zero it in to the look you really want.

You definately came to the right place to ask about LEDs. Schnitzelreef did a great job on his setup and has given some great advice. My light setup is a direct reflection of his input.

Commandoe · 05/16/2012, 06:09 PM

My tank is acrylic and has 3 openings and that’s the reason for 3 fixtures! I was thinking about 2 48” or maybe even 1 8 footer, but it would be easier IME for maintenence. I can DIY another canopy to move the fixture up to the height if I had to, so that’s also not a problem. I was thinking of 48 LEDs on each fixture, so that would put me almost to your recommendation, so that’s cool too! The greens and cyans seem to be the way to go in making the corals pop as someone else said, so I’m cool with that too! Nice to see that I’m not totally off point with this thing, and hopefully Scnitzelreef and more will chime in! But, can you tell me why the RapidLED dimmable 48 kit has 4 drivers and the AquaStyle dimmable 48 kit has only 2 drivers?

C5flyboy · 05/16/2012, 08:02 PM

Great question about the drivers, and the same question I have been trying to answer for myself. There are two types of drivers: Analogue and Pulse Wave Modulation. You can use either type of driver for any LED. The difference is in the way their dimming circuitry works. Best thing to do is google the to different types for an explination cause I will just butcher it. Aquastyle sells the analogue type where Rapid sells both. I went with the PWM type and used a Typhoon controller because I didn't want to drop a couple hundred bucks on a reef controller right now.

Now as far as how many led's you can run on a driver it has to do with the forward voltage of the led and I may be wrong but it seems the analogue drivers are able to handle quite a bit more LEDs per driver than the PWM drivers. Like I said Do a google search about the two types of drivers for a far better explination than I can give. I do know(because this is what i'm running) that the Mean Well ELN60-48P driver can only handle 14 LEDs max and you have to have at least 8 or it will fry them.

Each brand of LED is made a little different and has a different amount of power loss across each LED which makes a difference to the total number you can run as well so do some looking into the brand you decide to go with so you will know exactly what you need to get. Also with Aquastyle, Ray is GREAT with customer service so e-mail him from the site with questions about this too and he will definately get you turned the way you need to be going.

Daka · 05/16/2012, 08:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SchnitzelReef

Setup looks nice, but u will most def have to dimm your whites. Since I have setup my Lights and messed around with diff settings, I have my whites at like 50% or less. And that's with a 2:1 ratio. I think in going to recommend 3:1 from now on. Especially on smaller tanks, the whites are super bright.

Sent from my iPhone

Been readng tons of threads on different sites.Thought I would jump in here.
Schnitzeleef you stated that you think 3:1 is better. I am about ready to place an order with aquastyle, What leds should I get for a 90 gal. tank? I printed off that you have but the was 2:1 with some other colors added.
Please let me know what would work. Also do you still use moon lights or just adjust the leds? I will be controling with PWD using an Arduino controller.
I am picking the tank up sunday. Its a used 90gal and a 30gal sump both oceanic .
I plan it to be an"everything reef"....I hope. So any help would be great.
Thanks in advance
Daka

Commandoe · 05/16/2012, 10:05 PM

Thanks Flyboy, BTW, I’m retired Air Force myself! Well I have an Apex Controller so I know if I was going with the RapidLED, I would get the Mean Well ELN-60-48D dimmable drivers, because the Apex needs the 1-10V analog. Of course, I would rather have 2 drivers instead of 4, but I’ll take a look and try to find the difference! Going with the 3.1 ratio means 36 RB and 12 Whites per fixture, but I would like to throw in some color with the greens! I don’t want a too blue tank, so I was thinking of:
24 X RB
18 X 10k
6 X Greens
2 Lunar lights
That’s 50 LEDs per fixture! What do you think of that ratio! Shouldn’t that give me a good overall the spectrum?

I have a friend that’s going help my wire it up and make the heat sinks 24” X 10”

05/15/2012, 01:36 AM	#93
RonMidtownStomp You can edit this? Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Orangevale (Sacramento Area) Posts: 3,993	How hot does your C-Channel get without fans? I'm testing mine for the first time and it's too hot to touch after about 5 minutes. I'm concerned that my "Raytek MT4 Mini Temp Non-Contact Thermometer Gun with Laser Sighting" (Amazon) might not work correctly under aquarium lighting. It's reading 120F, but I think it's much hotter. Thoughts? __________________ Back in a hobby with an island 4-side viewable 4' cube with center overflow. Old school SPS dominant with a nice zoa collection and a few chalices. http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t

05/04/2012, 03:55 PM	#76
NickC5FE Registered Member Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 281	Yeah,you can

05/05/2012, 09:10 AM	#79
andrewbram Registered Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Colorado Posts: 337	So I have a 125 6ft long 18 wide it will be mostly sps do you think 72 led will be enough and what optics. Led will be about 8 inches off water final ? Are drivers plug and play or do you adjust driver for amount of leds. Tia!!!! Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

05/08/2012, 07:52 PM	#83
andrewbram Registered Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Colorado Posts: 337	Hey thank you for the reply. I am actually gonna get reef angel because I think it dim both. Good luck on the sticks they are addictive. Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

05/08/2012, 07:57 PM	#84
NickC5FE Registered Member Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 281	I hooked my wife's LEDs up and wow, they look great! Over her 20 gallon long, I have 24 on a 20 inch x 7inch HS. 16 RB, 6-6500 and 2-10K. All RB are on 80 degree optics, and all whites have no optics. I have the whites turned down to around 50 percent, and the RB up around 75 percent. It is a great 16k-ish color. Also, the lights are 8 inches off the tank. I will be looking to get some type of cheaper LED controller for her, but for right now, on/off is OK.

05/08/2012, 10:22 PM	#85
C5flyboy Registered Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Travis Air Force Base Posts: 75	Well The final set up I went with is 26RB, 5 10000k, 7 6500k, and 2 4500k. I have some extra spaces in the frame if more of any color or another color is wanted if the future. I got all the lights mounted and tinned. I'll get a pic tomorrow. Schnitzelreef and Nick thanks for all the help and advice, it has been much appreciated. I am going to be using the typhoon controller from Boost LED and so far seems really easy to set up and get going, we'll see how it works with lights hooked up to it in a day or two! Nick I'll keep you updated on how this controller works in case you want to get a controller of some type for E in the future. Though you have to use the P series controllers not the D series. I'm pretty sure the ones you have are D series from Aquastyle but I'll keep you up to date anyway. Oh and Nick E's tank looks pretty sweeeeet under those LEDs bro!

05/09/2012, 04:53 AM	#87
NickC5FE Registered Member Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 281	Looks good man!

05/09/2012, 10:02 PM	#88
C5flyboy Registered Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Travis Air Force Base Posts: 75	So here is this afternoons events: Got all the LEDs wired up (found out my soldering skills are pretty terrible at best ). Opened up all the drivers and turned them all the way down. Didn't get them set to the right output cause my multi meter has seemed to walk away. I connected all the wires to the 4 channels on the Typhoon controller and wanted to see if the lights would even turn on(I know, probably not the smartest thing to do. Remember Nick I'm not good with electricity) Anyway I turned everything on and thought I selected manual mode but selected all on instead..Oops! I got everything turned off and selected manual mode and turned it up to 10% and nothing except a quick flash. Went to 11% and one channel lit up. At about 13 % another channel kicked in. At 20% the third and fourth channels kicked. The manual mode runs all four channels at the same time. At this point I decided to run them up a bit and slowly went to 50%. I noticed two lights weren't working (each on different channels). I wanted to see how bright the lights would get so slowly started ramping them up some more and at about the 70ish% range one of the channels started to flash so I brought them back down and I stopped. I wanted to test this so I turned them back up and on of the other channels flashed so I turned them off and stopped for the night. My questions are do any of you know what (other than my great electrical skills) is causing the flashing? and on the controller there are two sets of four channels: One is 0-10V and the other is 0-5V. I was plugged into the 0-10V, should I have been plugged in to the 0-5Vchannel set instead?

05/09/2012, 11:58 PM	#89
SchnitzelReef Registered Member Join Date: May 2011 Location: Southern California Posts: 2,569	0-10v is the correct one

05/10/2012, 11:56 AM	#90
C5flyboy Registered Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Travis Air Force Base Posts: 75	Any idea as to the flahsing? If I'm not using big enough wire from the drivers to the lights, could that cause the lights to be comming on at different percentages instead of all at the same time? I'm using about 4-5 feet of wire between the driver and the lights so I can mount them behind my stand. Could I be loosing that much power in that stretch of wire, and if so could that be causing all the issues?

05/10/2012, 03:20 PM	#91
C5flyboy Registered Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Travis Air Force Base Posts: 75	It's alive!!!!! So I sat all morning thinking with my limited electrical skills and thought about the size wire that I was using from the Drivers to the LEDs and how much power it was loosing. So during lunch I went home and cut 36" strands of 16ga wire and spliced them in and also re-soldered the two lights that weren't working and set the drivers and like magic everything worked! I ran it all the way up to 100% and not a single flash or anything just blazing bright LEDs. I don't know how anyone can badmouth these Bridgelux lights cause they are crazy bright! I'll be putting the frame into the canopy tonight and will post some pics tomorrow! Thanks for all the help

05/15/2012, 12:58 AM	#92
SchnitzelReef Registered Member Join Date: May 2011 Location: Southern California Posts: 2,569	sweet, glad to hear it all worked out for u! post some pics i def wanna see it!

05/16/2012, 12:04 PM	#95
Commandoe Registered Member Join Date: Dec 2011 Location: Las Vegas, NV Posts: 55	Just found this post and its very good! Can you help/direct me in choosing what would be best for my application? I have a 240g acrylic tank, 8X2X2 ft. I need 3 - 24 inch fixtures! I don’t want them to hang but sit on lid of tank which makes them 3-3 1/2 inches from water surface! Please tell me what number of LED’s, the color ratio of LEDs and lenses you would recommend for per fixture?

05/16/2012, 01:43 PM	#96
C5flyboy Registered Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Travis Air Force Base Posts: 75	I can tell you that going with the aluminum C-channel that you can get at Lowes or home depot in either 8 or 10 foot pieces, I don't remember exactly what size, but that will allow you to build one fixture for your tank. You will probably want to put some sort of support legs on it as well to raise it up off the tank a little more than that. The ideal distance or the water from the research I did for my build is 6-8 inches. My fixture is somewhere between 7-8 inches off the water and it is bright all the way to the bottom and my lights are only at 80% and are BRIGHT. The ratio of blue to white really depends on what overall look you are going for like 10k, 14k, 20k in the metal halide world. A good rule of thumb that was told to me was a 2:1 blue to white. Scnitzelreef chime in here on actual color ratio for the whites, you are far smarter on that than I am. I would highly recommend the Bridgelux LEDs. They are a little cheaper and are every bit as good as Cree or any other brand. By all means shop around and do some research and choose the brand that you are comfortable with though, I can only give you my opinion. My tank is under Bridgelux LEDs. As far as actual number of LEDs I would think you are going to be looking in the 150ish range. You may also want to, depending on your own personal tastes and wants at this point, look into putting some cyans and maybe a couple of greens into the mix. If you have never done this before I would stick with white and blue to start with then you can tweak over time to really zero it in to the look you really want. You definately came to the right place to ask about LEDs. Schnitzelreef did a great job on his setup and has given some great advice. My light setup is a direct reflection of his input.

05/16/2012, 06:09 PM	#97
Commandoe Registered Member Join Date: Dec 2011 Location: Las Vegas, NV Posts: 55	My tank is acrylic and has 3 openings and that’s the reason for 3 fixtures! I was thinking about 2 48” or maybe even 1 8 footer, but it would be easier IME for maintenence. I can DIY another canopy to move the fixture up to the height if I had to, so that’s also not a problem. I was thinking of 48 LEDs on each fixture, so that would put me almost to your recommendation, so that’s cool too! The greens and cyans seem to be the way to go in making the corals pop as someone else said, so I’m cool with that too! Nice to see that I’m not totally off point with this thing, and hopefully Scnitzelreef and more will chime in! But, can you tell me why the RapidLED dimmable 48 kit has 4 drivers and the AquaStyle dimmable 48 kit has only 2 drivers?

05/16/2012, 08:02 PM	#98
C5flyboy Registered Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Travis Air Force Base Posts: 75	Great question about the drivers, and the same question I have been trying to answer for myself. There are two types of drivers: Analogue and Pulse Wave Modulation. You can use either type of driver for any LED. The difference is in the way their dimming circuitry works. Best thing to do is google the to different types for an explination cause I will just butcher it. Aquastyle sells the analogue type where Rapid sells both. I went with the PWM type and used a Typhoon controller because I didn't want to drop a couple hundred bucks on a reef controller right now. Now as far as how many led's you can run on a driver it has to do with the forward voltage of the led and I may be wrong but it seems the analogue drivers are able to handle quite a bit more LEDs per driver than the PWM drivers. Like I said Do a google search about the two types of drivers for a far better explination than I can give. I do know(because this is what i'm running) that the Mean Well ELN60-48P driver can only handle 14 LEDs max and you have to have at least 8 or it will fry them. Each brand of LED is made a little different and has a different amount of power loss across each LED which makes a difference to the total number you can run as well so do some looking into the brand you decide to go with so you will know exactly what you need to get. Also with Aquastyle, Ray is GREAT with customer service so e-mail him from the site with questions about this too and he will definately get you turned the way you need to be going.

05/16/2012, 10:05 PM	#100
Commandoe Registered Member Join Date: Dec 2011 Location: Las Vegas, NV Posts: 55	Thanks Flyboy, BTW, I’m retired Air Force myself! Well I have an Apex Controller so I know if I was going with the RapidLED, I would get the Mean Well ELN-60-48D dimmable drivers, because the Apex needs the 1-10V analog. Of course, I would rather have 2 drivers instead of 4, but I’ll take a look and try to find the difference! Going with the 3.1 ratio means 36 RB and 12 Whites per fixture, but I would like to throw in some color with the greens! I don’t want a too blue tank, so I was thinking of: 24 X RB 18 X 10k 6 X Greens 2 Lunar lights That’s 50 LEDs per fixture! What do you think of that ratio! Shouldn’t that give me a good overall the spectrum? I have a friend that’s going help my wire it up and make the heat sinks 24” X 10”