DIY LED project. 24 x 3w and 40 x 3w

[Tom Toro]

No problem, Chris.

The 36 count led kit is actually the one I bought. It came with everything included except the heat sink and fan (extra on their site). It doesn't show the two power cords, but mine came with two.

-You'll need more 20 gauge wire unless you plan on mounting the drivers very close to the last LED soldered.

-At $.50 a piece, you might want to buy a couple of different angle optics. I wish I had.

-Get some extra wire connectors. They only give just enough.

-I bought a Weller 40 watt soldering iron with three hot heads. Ended up using the middle size one. Small one heated too slowly.

-Their fans are terrible. No power at all so if they include it, use the transformer and buy a good muffin fan. You'll know what I mean as soon as you turn it on. The heat sink wasn't drilled for the fan.

-Your two drivers will drive 40 LED's @ 3w each so maybe order 4 more of different colors to use it all or more of the white for par. The whites and blues are around $3 each.

-Project box to mount the two potentiometers.

-Some good quality thermal epoxy. Their's is supposed to set up in 10 minutes and it took over 24 hrs for it to stop moving. Maybe we were doing something wrong. They are holding now, but when you have the LED's soldered together, they move around a lot when trying to place 'em.

-We soldered separately from the heat sink and glued as a string. Not sure if this was better or worse, but we figured the heat sink would draw the heat out and make it harder to get the plate on the LED hot enough.

I'm thinking about ordering some more from them to light up my 240. If you end up building them, let me know how you like them and if it's enough par. My son's is definitely strong enough on his 24g biocube and he has it turned down. I gave him some sps as a test so we'll see.

Quick update: The 24 gallon biocube is growing sps with this setup. He has the whites on about 70% and the blues on about 90%. Easy to keep sps, but they're happy. Purple haze,pocillipora,blue stag,pink birdsnest,pink lemonade. Other corals doing well in there are zoas and a neon green candy cane. He doesn't have a skimmer, only one small fish and does weekly 5g water changes.

In my 135g, the corals have really colored up since the LED upgrade, although the success might be from actually keeping my numbers right with the doser from Chuck (Binford).

I'll have pics soon. The biocube is coming to my house in May for the summer.

[projectx]

Cool build, I am looking at doing one here shortly. How about growth and color in your tank?
Anything lost color ? What is Steves where you got the long heat sink,
Sorry for all of the questions, was running some chinese fixtures and just wasnt happy with the colors etc

[Tom Toro]

Cool build, I am looking at doing one here shortly. How about growth and color in your tank?
Anything lost color ? What is Steves where you got the long heat sink,
Sorry for all of the questions, was running some chinese fixtures and just wasnt happy with the colors etc

Thanks.

My long tube setup:
Growth was definitely better with the new led's.Poly extension was way better.

Color was great. Much more intense with 120w vs 42w. Tons more shimmer too. You can change that around if play with the optic options. I like the shimmer.

Individual corals each had their own changes. Pink birdsnest got pinker. Green stag turned blue almost all the way down to the base (used to have just blue tips). Both brain corals started growing very fast(for brain corals). They hadn't changed in years. Purple Haze turned from brown to deep purple.

I didn't lose anything.

Now as a side note, about the same time as this I started auto dosing my alk/ca and was getting some consistent numbers for once so I can't say the lights were the sole cause. But I know they helped.

My son's biocube:
Success all around and like I say, it'll be at my house soon and if the corals all survive the move, I'll take some pics.

Here's Steve's site.
Tubular Heatsinks

[projectx]

oh cool, glad to hear it.
I ordered the Make professional heatsinks from LEDgroupbuy.com, they are a preorder only right now, but should be pretty slick when they come in. I am piecing this together buying a little here n a little there to offset the cost.

Glad to hear your having success with the builds