Ryan’s ever changing tank...

ryewalk84

ryewalk84

Angel Fish
#1
#1
After moving to Denver, I took a small hiatus from my aquarium. I tore down my 300 and eventually set up a 40 breeder.

40 breeder build
http://www.marinecolorado.org/threads/ryans-mostly-diy-40-breeder.22993/

In this thread I started to experiment a lot with my DIY LED fixture and added a bunch of other LED colors. Within the year I upgraded to a 75 and will soon be moving to a 125 acrylic. Over the last few weeks I’ve been upgrading the LED fixture from 2 units to 4 units to accommodate for a 6 foot tank. Pictures are to come once I figure it out. Haven’t posted a picture since the change over. Swap to the 125 won’t probably happen for a few months but the LED build is coming along quite nicely.
 
ryewalk84

ryewalk84

Angel Fish
#3
#3
Finally figured out how to embed these photos. Here is the start of the remake of my LED fixture. Originally two units, I am now upgrading it to 4 and changing the configuration of the LEDs and amounts. I hated how the units were permanently attached when it came to moving them around, so I have added connectors that attach to a main "brain". The brain will hold all of the drivers and the PWM controllers to be able to adjust brightness level of 8 channels from my apex.

Container for all of the wiring.



Beginning the wiring process.....
 
SynDen

SynDen

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#7
#7
Nice work, those look great. What LED, Drivers and heat sinks are you using?
 
ryewalk84

ryewalk84

Angel Fish
#9
#9
SynDen said:
Nice work, those look great. What LED, Drivers and heat sinks are you using?
Click to expand...
The less are a combination of Cree, luxeon and semileds. The whites are 5000 kelvin, 2 types of royal blue, deep red, cyan, blue, 4 types of violet ranging from 390-430nm, Amber and lime. Everything stayed the same from the first, except I added another peak in the royal blues and added a bunch of violet less to increase the range. Who knows what it will do for everything.

Drivers are the meanwell ldd. Using the 500, 700 and 1000 ma drivers depending on the LEDs.

Heat sinks are the makersLED headsinks. Way more than I wanted to spend but I didn’t want to drill or tap them to attach the LEDs. Plus I wanted a more finished look for everything this time, compared to the big flat heatsinks.
 
ryewalk84

ryewalk84

Angel Fish
#11
#11
Got some power to the LEDs and I almost got everything right. On one unit I switched the place of the blue and cyan LEDs but surprisingly everything powered up. I struggled quite a bit with the PWM converters. I used Ethernet jacks to plug the cables from the VDM into and it was pretty difficult to figure out where the wires corresponded on the back of the jack. Everything is fully functional now. Just have to get it back on my tank and get the spectrum/par setup.
 
ryewalk84

ryewalk84

Angel Fish
#13
#13
Who has the brains when it comes to selecting the proper color balance/spectrum? I have the seneye and have been playing around with different settings to try and get everything right, but it doesn't read everything super well. Right now I have everything set to what looks good to me.
 
ryewalk84

ryewalk84

Angel Fish
#14
#14
The light has been over the tank for almost a week now. The corals are looking great so far and I have noticed a big difference in pH the last 3 days. Not sure what may be causing that yet.

Measured the lights and I think I have everything worked out for a nice crisp white that makes the corals pop. Too much red?? Everything that I have read talks about the negatives of red. Not sure if I should turn it down or not.

Royal Blue




Violet



Blue

 
ryewalk84

ryewalk84

Angel Fish
#17
#17
Attempted to play around with my camera. Adjusted the white balance and it did a pretty good job of getting everything to look like it does in person.


 
ryewalk84

ryewalk84

Angel Fish
#18
#18
Also tried to take photos of the corals under the royal blue and violet LEDs. While it didn't work, the pictures turned out incredible.

 
SynDen

SynDen

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#19
#19
Looking good, pretty impressive light you built
ya want to keep the red to a minimum. You do need a little bit to get full spectrum but to much will cause major algae growth. The blue and or the Cyan/blue ones are more like what you want to see on a reef tank, with maybe All-on for peak lighting hours. There was an article some years ago, with someone that did a study on best led colors/spectrum to make an led reef light like this. Ill see if I can find it
Photos look good. Little trick for taking pics under reef lights is to use a yellow lens filter. The yellow balances out the high color temperature our lights run at, which helps make it easier to get photos that look like they do in the tank ;)
 
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neil82

neil82

Sting ray
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#20
#20
ryewalk84 said:
Also tried to take photos of the corals under the royal blue and violet LEDs. While it didn't work, the pictures turned out incredible.

Click to expand...
Hey this looks like some pretty high end stuff haha. Definitely cool looking under that lighting.
 
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