Long awaited LED lighting project

[Creekview]

Fixed incomes make you frugal, so I've been saving for my LED lighting project for my 55 reef and the new 33 above it. I've bought 10 10w hybrid 1000k white/royal blue LED's. The nice thing about 10w LEDs is you can drive them with a surplus PC switching power supply. I'm using one rated @ 500w output. I'm putting a 5w 2 ohm ceramic resistor in the + 12 v lead to drop the voltage a little, as these LEDs will run really hot and burn out quickly @ 12v. Half of the LEDs are 6 white 3 blue cells, the other half are 6 blue 3 white. I'm going to mix them as I experiment with the look. I'm using a salvaged aluminum ladder stand-off made of 2"x2" square tube. It's bowed and exactly 48" long. This will be the support and heat sink for the 55 gallon. The 55 will get 6 of the 10 LEDs, the 33 will get 4. 33 support and heat sink is going to be made of heavy aluminum angle stock with fins made of light weight aluminum U channel thermally and mechanically bonded together. I've tested several of these LEDs and the heat will be easily dissipated by the supports. They are 110 degree spread LEDs that will easily penetrate the 55 to the bottom. I have no idea what PAR will be, but I think I should be able to grow darned near anything. I'm wiring them to a breakout block so I can try different configs before hooking them to an Arduino 8 relay shield. Phase 2 is an Arduino micro computer to control lights and other tank functions. I'll add some 1 and 3w LEDs later to handle dawn, dusk and moonlight lighting. Starting the wire up for the 55 tomorrow. Will post pics. Total investment in LEDs and hardware.....less than 75 bucks.

 

[StirCrayzy]

Boy, less than $75 is pretty cheap.
Can I see the spec sheets,? I'm curious who is the manufacturer.

 

[Creekview]

Chinese on ebay. Seller is 2012topdeal. Square Actinic Hybrid 10W Cold White 10000K+Royal Blue High Power LED Light Bulb
Specifications:

Order Quantity: 1pcs

Power: 10W

Emitted Color: 6pcs Cold White+3pcs Royal Blue chip

Color Temperature for White: 10000K

Wavelength for Blue: 447nm~455nm

Brightness: 900LM

DC Forward Voltage (VF): 9V~11V

DC Forward Current (IF): 1000mA

Maximum Pulse Voltage: 12V

Maximum Pulse Current: 1100mA

LED Viewing Angle: 110 degree

Size: (L) 20mm*(W)20mm

 

[desertranger]

Becareful low quality LED's can cause an algee explosion. That's what happened to me so I went back to T-5's.

 

[Creekview]

Becareful low quality LED's can cause an algee explosion. That's what happened to me so I went back to T-5's.

I have a captive algae explosion, a scrubber. I've settled on two blue/white and four white/blue. The corals have all opened up. The color is bluer than I like, so I'm going to add 2 and possibly 4 more 14000k 10w and see how it looks. Penetration is good, spread and coverage is excellent. If you are going to try this economy route, be sure to use 5w 2 ohm ceramic power resistors. They get very warm. I'm going to bond them to a heat sink I have. The GSP colonies and my green mushrooms flouresce nicely, as do several of the zoa colonies. Gonna give it a few days and see how everything reacts

 

[StirCrayzy]

Did you set it up to be dimmable?

I was always leary of those multi-chips.
There are mixed reviews, mostly on PAR #s low in the tank because they are fundamentally just a group of 1w diodes grouped together. Can you take some pics of the corals now, then after a few weeks? I'm curious how they react.

 

[Creekview]

Corals are really opened up. They were under T-5s. I'm definitely going to add a couple more 14000k. I measured the voltage at the resistors, it's driving them at 9.35v, 1.5v below what they're rated for. Use a big fat ceramic power resistor to handle that. Have a lot of experience with Chinese LEDs in other applications. Best to run them 10-20% below rated voltage and use more of them because they're so cheap. And almost any high power (over 5w) LED is multiple emitters on a single die. I'll post pics tonite after work. I'm going to used phased lower wattage LEDs to handle dusk, dawn, and moonlight duties rather than dimming them. They'll be timed by an arduino microcomputer.

 

[mcentire1123]

Any pics?

 

[Creekview]

Re: Long awaited LED lighting project - few pics before work, 1:30 PM est

I run my lights on an off clock cycle due to my work schedule. On at 11:30AM. I turned the actinic blue/whites (2) on at 11:00AM. Everything seems to be a little more open, save the GSP. One little nubbin of a toadstool leather I rescued is especially happy. I'll know more tonite when I get home.

 

[Creekview]

Something weird, couldn't post pics to photo albums on this site. Gonna try the photobucket thing. These are from yesterday after lights were on for 3 hrs.

 

[goma]

 

[goma]

Under the picture, or to the right of it in Photobucket, copy the data in the "IMG" field and just post it.

 

[Creekview]

Got it, thanks! These are from 5 pm today, lights on 6 hrs. Some are top down, you can see the reflections of the LEDs. Everything looks good, GSPs aren't quite as extended as usual. Little nubbin of a toadstool leather stalk is very happy. He's put his feeders way out. Yellow polyps are very happy as well. Clove polyps are wide open.

 

[mcentire1123]

Looks great!

 

[Creekview]

I'm still going to add some more white 14000k 10w. A little too blue I think. Otherwise I'm happy with the investment. The 2" aluminum square tube they're mounted to was a little warm, so I mounted a couple of old CPU heat sinks to it. No fans, just the sinks. A little thermal paste and zip ties. Temps dropped to just above room temp. Going to add 6 1w for moonlights and 6 3w for dusk/dawn. Nice thing about using a PC power supply is that I have 3.3 volt outputs, which nicely under drive a 3.6v 3w LED. 12000k 3w are 10 for $10 with free shipping. 1w LEDs also run on 3.3v, and are also around $1 each. I run all the lights off one surplus PC power supply. Computer controlled relays will eventually phase the lights up and down.

 

[Bearjohnson]

Interesting build! I'm tagging along.

It does look a bit on the blue side but in a good way. I can't wait to see what it looks like when you add the additional lights!

 

[StirCrayzy]

If you are pushing regulated voltage, doesn't each led require a separate feed?
I'm no electrician, I'm guessing these aren't wired in series like most applications, please share build pics !

 

[Creekview]

If you are pushing regulated voltage, doesn't each led require a separate feed?
I'm no electrician, I'm guessing these aren't wired in series like most applications, please share build pics !

There are about 10 yellow 12v wires that come out of a PC power supply. Inside the power supply they all connect to a common point on the power supply circuit board. I clipped off 4 of them at the board. Same with the orange 3.3v output wires. Black wires are ground. I left 6 of them, cut off the rest. Red is +5v output. Those and all other wires I cut back to about 6", wrapped them in electrical tape and coiled them inside the power supply case. I routed two yellow and one black to the breakout block. I jumper end yellow to 6 of the busses on the breakout. That gave me a place to hook in the resistors. Each resistor feeds 9.35v to the + of each LED. I used 14 gauge speaker wire (had a roll laying around). Each LED gets a wire from the + output where the resistor is. All - wires connect back to a common bus. See pic below. Please note, this is a temporary wiring job!! Ain't pretty yet! 6 resistors, one for each LED. Right now, I'm using ~12% of the power supply's capacity. The resistors cost 25 cents each on ebay. The breakout block is another salvage item. It lets me quickly change the wiring configs, so when I add relays, I just have to add and move wires around.

 

[Creekview]

Today's photos

Everything still looks good. Lights on almost 4 hours. Yellow polyps really extended today. Also ordered the rest of the LEDs today:

10PCS 1W White High Power LED Light Emitter 6000-6500K with 20mm Star Heatsink
8PCS 10Watt 10W High Power Bright LED 1100LM Bulb Cool White 10000K
10PCS 1W High Power Blue LED Light Emitter 460-475NM with 20mm Star Heatsink
10PC 3W Royal Blue LED Light Emitter 450-455NM with 20mm Star Heatsink

$31 with free shipping. The 1 watt 6500k will be dusk dawn, as well as some of the 1w blues. 3w blues will be used for moon light as well as fill-in. 10w 10000k will whiten things up I hope. I considered 14000ks but it's too blue already.

I found some info cruising through some websites suggesting 2-3w per gallon if you use cheap Chinese LEDs. If I add 6 more 10w whites for "full sun" periods, I'll be at 120w. I'm not convinced I'll need that much given how the tank is reacting. The nice thing about how I've wired things is that I can fool around with configurations, then finalize the connections.

Clove polyps looking perky.

Zoas seem to be happy.

 

[Creekview]

A few photos 7 days in

Corals, especially zoas and yellow polyps, have put on a growth spurt. What was a beige toadstool has started to green up. GSPs have returned to their previous extension, and also have put on a growth spurt. No adverse impact on in tank algae growth.

Big toadstool has fully extended. Toadstool nubbin is upper left center next to mushroom. He's very happy.

Gorgonian is hyperextended.

Good sized sponge is left center. She's plumped up and is developing more mouths on one side.

The rest of my LEDs have left China and should be here by Saturday.