Different ways to use LEDs

[Jon Lazar]

I

[dakotasreef]

Interesting idea. Let us know how it goes.

[zygote2k]

wouldn't you really need to do a major re-aquascaping to take advantage of lighting the tank as you describe? as it is now, your coral was grown from top down- how are you going to arrange things to take light from different angles?

why not just use p38's on swivel head track lighting?

[OldReefer]

The 1 inch-wide heat sinks from Rapid LED would be perfect for what you describe. You may not need optics. If that is the plan I would go with XMLs instead of XPGs. You can run up to 16 off one mean well 60 48 D.

[Chad]

I think it is an interesting idea, I am interested to see it.

[scott711]

I use a light mover to get better angles.

[Jon Lazar]

wouldn't you really need to do a major re-aquascaping to take advantage of lighting the tank as you describe? as it is now, your coral was grown from top down- how are you going to arrange things to take light from different angles?

why not just use p38's on swivel head track lighting?

 

Zygote, I shouldn't need to reaquascape. I expect to reduce some of the shading that traditional noon-sun lighting causes at the base of corals. I don't think P38s will work because of geometry: they're too long, especially when mounted on a swivel, and won't fit in the front of my hood.

 

 

The 1 inch-wide heat sinks from Rapid LED would be perfect for what you describe. You may not need optics. If that is the plan I would go with XMLs instead of XPGs. You can run up to 16 off one mean well 60 48 D.

 

I didn't see the XMLs on rapidLED; is there a better place to find them?

 

 

I use a light mover to get better angles.

 

I like the light mover idea for motion along the long axis of the tank, but I'm not sure I could use it here to angle light down across the front of the reef face.

[zygote2k]

how much room inside the canopy? If you can handle 10 inches or so, then the P38's will work. Other than that, maybe it's time for some underwater led fixtures?

[Jon Lazar]

I've read a lot of posts but am still confused about what possibilities there are for drivers, and what a good fit is for my interests.

 

I have a 60"x18" footprint for 1080 in^2, so originally I thought 96 LEDs with 8 Meanwell ELN 60-48D drivers would be plenty of light. But there's a lot of discussion about using fewer, different drivers. I'm not sure which ones would fit my needs.

 

I don't have an APEX and won't get one just to support LED dimming, but someday my AC3 will break and I will likely get an APEX so it would be nice for the system to be able to dim the LEDs. Until then, I'm happy to just make each of the 8 drivers come on in progression like people do when they have multiple T5s. I don't want ALL 96 lights to come on or go off at the same time. I'm ok with having a small bank of pots, 1 per driver, to adjust the max intensity and therefore the mixture of blue:white.

 

But if there's a better way than having 8 meanwell drivers, I'm open to that too. I would need at least a few separately controllable drivers though so I could turn on LED banks in progression. I just don't know what other driver makes sense and doesn't present a risk of electrocution.

 

I'm handy enough to be able to follow directions to build, and possibly program, a DIY controller. Does that mean I have to use drivers that are incompatible with an APEX? I wouldn't want to do that.

[Guest thefishman65]

Jon look at the HLG series of driver. They want to do large banks. I don't know of any driver that would work well for what you are describing. Well other than some of the DIY ones.