Building LEDs to get T5 growth.

[Decadence]

There is no doubt about it that T5s have the best growth out of any of the different types of light. I believe that the reasons for this would be the wide range of spectrums possible with different bulb combinations mixed with the coverage made possible by not being limited to a single point of light. I'm working on a new fixture to get ridiculous coverage on the 150. The most important feature of this build is going to be the curve and the mixture of optics in order to get the extremely directional light from the LEDs to surround the corals and eliminate the "shaded side" of the branches which I believe will mean for faster growth. The other important feature will be a whole lot of LEDs, dimmed down in order to get more even coverage throughout the whole tank and a much more diverse spectrum. Right now all of my acros are growing on average around half an inch every 2-4 weeks and sprouting new branches like crazy. I think that I can get more our of my system.

 

To build my frame, I measured out and bent some aluminum flat stock to get the width and curve which I wanted on the fixture and then drilled ten equally spaced holes in order to mount my C-channel.

 

The construction is pretty simple, with the bottom bent, I was able to drill holes as I went to mount the top piece. The top keeps the angle from being able to bend with any weight or pressure.

 

After it was all assembled, I trimmed the ends of the top bars with an angle grinder.

 

This thing only took a couple hours to build. I'm going to beed blast it to get a nice finish on it.

 

You can see the curve. I'll post a picture of the LED layout but the goal is to get a lot of colors in the center and then have 50:50 white:blue on the outsides with narrow optics, hitting the corals from the front and rear.

 

All-in-all, there will be 240 3w LEDs on twelve dimmable meanwell drivers, controlled by two RKM ALC modules on my reef keeper.

 

I will update this thread when more parts come in.

[LCDRDATA]

There is no doubt about it that T5s have the best growth out of any of the different types of light. I believe that the reasons for this would be the wide range of spectrums possible with different bulb combinations mixed with the coverage made possible by not being limited to a single point of light. ... I'll post a picture of the LED layout but the goal is to get a lot of colors in the center and then have 50:50 white:blue on the outsides with narrow optics, hitting the corals from the front and rear. ...

 

Wow! One thing occurs to me -- given the way you are setting this up, you could treat each C-channel as a separate "T-5 bulb" and adjust your LED mix accordingly. Since the T-5 spectra are available online, you could theoretically build your LEDs to match whatever combination you currently use (X Blue Plus, Y Fiji Purple, Z Super Actinic, etc). Maybe that's what you are doing, but I thought I'd mention it. This should be quite the rig when you're done!

[Coral Hind]

There is no doubt about it that T5s have the best growth out of any of the different types of light.

MH is still the king in my opinion for growth.

 

Why narrow optics on the front and rear? This looks like it is going to be an interesting build. Keep the pictures coming.

[zygote2k]

Neat build but I totally disagree with "T-5's are the best for growing coral". I would have to go with hind on this and agree the MH is by far the best light source to grow corals with. LED is a close second though.

 

Your project looks like it will be heavy though.

 

I use 12) P38 bulbs and adjustable sockets on a 90 and there aren't any shadows on branches or dark spots. Grows corals like crazy too.

[Decadence]

Wow! One thing occurs to me -- given the way you are setting this up, you could treat each C-channel as a separate "T-5 bulb" and adjust your LED mix accordingly. Since the T-5 spectra are available online, you could theoretically build your LEDs to match whatever combination you currently use (X Blue Plus, Y Fiji Purple, Z Super Actinic, etc). Maybe that's what you are doing, but I thought I'd mention it. This should be quite the rig when you're done!

 

I have a layout all planned for the LEDs to get the best coverage from what colors are most important. It would be really nice if they made LED bulbs near to specs from bulbs such as ATI's. Right now on my tank, I have a large block of tightly packed LEDs top-center and then additional white:blue in the front, angled down and back. This is what gave me the idea to do this. That set up probably doubled the rate of growth which I was getting by just lighting the corals with LEDs from above.

 

MH is still the king in my opinion for growth.

 

Why narrow optics on the front and rear? This looks like it is going to be an interesting build. Keep the pictures coming.

 

I have seen people run very successful tanks with extremely fast growth using MH and T5 but the T5 tanks always seam like they have an edge in both speed and coloration when equally equipped otherwise. I believe it to be because of the more "full" coverage from the way that T5 bulbs spread their light. Those 10+ bulb fixtures have light coming from every direction, very similar to what MH offers with wide reflectors but just a little more efficient (as seen in a lack of "shimmer"). Of course, this is just from what I have seen. I would use metal halide over T5 just for the cost factor if nothing else.. which is sort of the reason which I am partial to LEDs.

 

Neat build but I totally disagree with "T-5's are the best for growing coral". I would have to go with hind on this and agree the MH is by far the best light source to grow corals with. LED is a close second though. Your project looks like it will be heavy though. I use 12) P38 bulbs and adjustable sockets on a 90 and there aren't any shadows on branches or dark spots. Grows corals like crazy too.

 

I figured a lot of people would disagree about T5 over MH but it is rather difficult to find people who have used 10+ bulb ATI lights and the such due to the cost. Most of the SPS tanks which I idolized early on in the hobby (2003ish) were using T5vho. If nothing else, the tanks just look brighter.

 

The frame in the picture weighs close to 2lbs, much lighter than a single 120w Chinese LED fixture which only covers one third of the tank.. and poorly at that. My 150 is basically a shallow 180g (72"x24"x20") and this frame comes in at 48"x18" so it's actually extremely light for what it is. Unfortunately, I have to build a box to stick all of the drivers in but that will probably be under the tank.

 

Those PAR38s make great accents. I build them using blue, red and uv and use them to add colors to the normal 1:1, royal blue:white fixtures and it makes a world of difference.

Edited May 2, 2013 by Decadence

[AlanM]

I like it. I assume he's using the narrow optics to get more power when at the more tilt-y angles in the front and the back so it will penetrate further and also to keep the light confined to where he wants it to go.

 

Could have you bent the C-channels lengthwise as well so that you could have it be double-focusing? 8)

 

Or build one of these with LEDs along the strips

 

 

Which we have installed on one of our instruments at work. There are 17 tiny crystals on each bendable strip of metal. Then each strip can be turned independently, so it focuses in two directions in real time.

[Decadence]

I like it. I assume he's using the narrow optics to get more power when at the more tilt-y angles in the front and the back so it will penetrate further and also to keep the light confined to where he wants it to go.

 

Could have you bent the C-channels lengthwise as well so that you could have it be double-focusing? 8)

 

Or build one of these with LEDs along the strips

 

 

Which we have installed on one of our instruments at work. There are 17 tiny crystals on each bendable strip of metal. Then each strip can be turned independently, so it focuses in two directions in real time.

 

I forgot to address that question but you pretty much nailed it. I want the outside lights to surround the rock structure and be the most intense of all of the lights. In nature, the sun is only directly above the corals for a few hours a day. I eventually want to run my lights on a bunch of ALC modules to simulate a sun-up-sun-down and start from just the front, with everything on at mid-day and just the back later in the day. Right now I only have two modules (controls four programmable dimmers) but I would probably need five to make that all work.

 

That machine is cool looking. I didn't know that they even made hammocks like that.

[AlanM]

I don't know how far you want to go with this, but the Meanwell LDD's only cost about $6 each and can do 15 LEDs each if you use a 48V power supply. They are PWM dimmable. You can get an Arduino Uno (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11224) and a separate PWM shield (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10615) to have 16 channels of dimming and maybe do a sun-up-sun-down effect.

[Decadence]

That sounds like a pretty sweet set-up to try out in the future. Right now I already have 11 out of the 12 meanwell drivers that I need and two RKM ALC modules. I would really like to learn how to set up and program ardruino processors (I know only basic C++) and apply them to reef tanks. I'm going to building another very similar fixture for our frag tank which will probably be the same footprint as our 150 and this may be cool to try it with.

[Mattiejay6]

I don't know how far you want to go with this, but the Meanwell LDD's only cost about $6 each and can do 15 LEDs each if you use a 48V power supply. They are PWM dimmable. You can get an Arduino Uno (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11224) and a separate PWM shield (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10615) to have 16 channels of dimming and maybe do a sun-up-sun-down effect.

can you explain how to do that using those?

[AlanM]

can you explain how to do that using those?

Sort of depends how much you already know. You would buy:

 

Arduino uno board

A real time clock if you want to do sunrise timing and you dont already have a controller (like this one https://www.adafruit.com/products/255 )

48V power supply with wattage rating you want depending on your leds

Some Meanwell LDD drivers

A 7-12v power supply for the Uno (wall wart)

Lots of wires, 22gauge

Some LEDs, 15 per driver usually

A heatsink

 

Wire it all up, making sure the negative DC wires are all tied together

 

Write your Arduino sketch which lots of websites can help with. If you want half power on a driver, as an example, it is as simple as doing "analogWrite(outPin,127)" because 255 is full power. You dont even need a PWM shield. The uno comes with 6 channels of pwm out.

[AlanM]

For another quick idea.  Here's the arduino sketch I'm using to turn four 0-10V analog outputs from my Apex controller into four 5V PWM outputs for the LDD drivers.  It's really simple.  You don't even really need the Apex to do the dimming if you put the clock on I mentioned above.  You can query the clock for the time in your main loop and do things based upon time.  You also have a bunch of analog and digital input pins you can query to do things like ATO and stuff like that with a bit of work and some relays.

int inPins[] = {A0, A1, A2, A3};
int outPins[] = {10,9,6,5};

const int numReadings = 60;     //  how many previous values do we want to average?
int readings[4][numReadings];      // the readings from the analog input
int totals[] = {0,0,0,0};
int newAverage = 0;


void setup()  {
   // initialize serial communications at 9600 bps:
   Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  
    for (int c = 0; c < 4; c++) { // loop through all 4 channels
      for (int count = 0; count < numReadings; count++) { // average over numReadings to avoid jitter
      totals[c] -= readings[c][count];  // subtract old reading from the total
      readings[c][count]=analogRead(inPins[c]);  // read new reading from analog pin
      totals[c] += readings[c][count]; // add new reading to total
      newAverage = totals[c]/numReadings; // take the average
      analogWrite(outPins[c],map(newAverage,0,1023,0,255));  // send it out the PWM pin
    }
  }
  delay(1000); // loop through once per second
}

[Mattiejay6]

Wow. Thanks

[Jason Rhoads]

I really like the idea of bending the fixture. I wish I had thought of that when I built mine. I had the same goal of no shadows, but the only thing I could come up with to achieve that was: put in more lights

 

Looking forward to seeing this in action!