DIY LED build

[kjsreef]

I've been thinking about LED's for awhile and reading some great build on reef central. I finally bit the bullet and built a unit to replace my 150w DE MH that is over my frag tank.

The kit is from rapidled.com and comes with a LED driver, 6 CREE LED's (3W white Q5's and 3W blues). I purchased the heatsink online and had the fan laying around my parts drawer.

picture is a closeup of the LED's soldered and attached to the heatsink.

The driver can handle a total of 12 LED's

[kjsreef]

Here is a comparison of the 20K 150w DE MH to the 6 LED setup over my frag tank. I don't have a quantum meter thus I don't know the par difference.

[kjsreef]

Here is the completed unit over the frag tank. I plan to get 6 more LED's and complete the setup and see how the corals in the frag tank respond.

[kjsreef]

The kit was $70 (driver, led's, arctic silver epoxy). heatsink was ~$20. With shipping the total comes out around $100.00.

[dragon]

Did the kit came with wiring instructions?

[kjsreef]

No, but the thread on reef central explains it pretty well. Basically it is + lead of driver to + of 1st led then - of 1st led to + of next LED and so forth. It's pretty simple although you do need to be good with solder and I had to upgrade my 15w solder iron to a 40w. The heatsink on the star takes the heat away too fast!

[egd101]

im impressed did you get specs for all the leds and what was the resistors and caps rated at for the leds. aslo did you get a powersupple with the kit or you just found a source doing the math.
marlon

[kjsreef]

The beauty of using an Led driver is that you don't have to worry about resistors and capacitors. The driver is constant current thus you can wire the leds in series (min 3, max 12) and not worry about anything else.

[kjsreef]

I upgraded the unit with 6 more leds and this time used an adhesive thermal double sided tape instead of the epoxy. Took all of 30 minutes to solder the additional 6 leds to the unit. I'll update folks after a month to see how my corals in my frag tank are responding. I'm going to keep similar corals in the frag tank (led) and the main tank (250w MH 20K) to see how the colors compare.

[kjsreef]

Here is another shot of the 12 led unit (36 watts of LED light).

[Nick_Kun]

Wow, nice write up kelly. I'm thinking of doin the same thing with a nano in the future.

[smirkis]

pics over the tank? nice job

[jharr]

Am I right that the corals in the frag tank are only under a few inches of water? Also a kill-a-watt analysis would be good to see if switching would be worth the expense.

[unbereefable]

Do the LEDs use that much less power than regular lighting combos? I want to start a mild reef tank, but I dont want to watch my SDG&E meter spin everytime I turn the lights on.

[nahtanoj]

not sure on these particular lights that Kelly built. but, the PAR/energy consumptions on RC are showing a 150w LED system running equal to a 400w MH system. that is a big difference. another thread, built the LED system slightly different replaced both of his 175w MH's with LED's and ran under 175w total. there are several options on building these DIY's, and RC has a few threads on doing it.