Jon Lazar April 19, 2011 Share April 19, 2011 I Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dakotasreef April 19, 2011 Share April 19, 2011 Interesting idea. Let us know how it goes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zygote2k April 20, 2011 Share April 20, 2011 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? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldReefer April 20, 2011 Share April 20, 2011 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad April 20, 2011 Share April 20, 2011 I think it is an interesting idea, I am interested to see it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scott711 April 20, 2011 Share April 20, 2011 I use a light mover to get better angles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Lazar April 21, 2011 Author Share April 21, 2011 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zygote2k April 22, 2011 Share April 22, 2011 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? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Lazar May 18, 2011 Author Share May 18, 2011 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest thefishman65 May 18, 2011 Share May 18, 2011 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now