Holy fruit loops batman, those are great pics and amazing colors. I to would suggest getting adjusted to the LED's before you sell but that's just my 2 cents :biggrin:

Thanks all, I've decided to hang onto the fixture for a while. I'm going to spend a little more time and money on it to fix some of my issues with it.

I've ordered a custom Arduino controller to take the place of the LEDcontrol4 by profilux which was disappointing to say the least. The controller will control everything related to the light fixture including heat sink temperature. I'm also going to work on coming up with some ideas to shade the LEDs.

We'll see how this goes.

how high do you have the fixture above the tank? controling the light spill might be as simple as putting optics on your outside edge of LEDs or lowering the fixture. I would see how low you can go befor you don't get nice coverage and mixture.

Steve

It's pretty much as low as I can put it, plus even if I lowered the fixture it wouldn't help as the problem is the profile is too short and the LEDs don't go far enough up into the fixture, lowering it really won't accomplish anything unless it basically touches the water. I'm not using optics and don't plan on it so that won't work.

I'm just going to add a 1.5" trim piece to the bottom to extend the profile a little, that should fix the issue.

OK so one problem solved.

The light bleed was pretty bad, so without going crazy the best solution seemed to be build a small extension.

This was it before:
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a1...1/DSC_6796.jpg

Here's the extension all built and stained:
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a1...1/DSC_6835.jpg

And here's the final result:
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a1...1/DSC_6838.jpg
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a1...1/DSC_6837.jpg

No more light bleed which is much better but I'm not sure if I lost a few points on style :mrgreen:

Lost? No I think you gained points. Thats very nice!!!!

I agree with Dan. I like it better.

Wow! That looks fantastic! I'm looking to change out my T5s right now and am torn between looking at a DIY MH and a DIY LED (maybe an AI Sol). Everytime I look at LED stuff, though, it seems as though people are complaining about colour of reds and orange and loss of richness in the corals compared to MH. But holy damn, does that tank shot look great!

What % are you running at in thoes pics? also have you looked into some PAR readings yet? if you do can you make sure you do a 100% setting reading as well as where you like it please. I am realy interested to see how Steve's LEDs put out.


Steve

Hard to say exactly as the controller varies throughout the day but I would guess blues close to 90%, whites at about 70% and reds 5%.

No par meter over here so not much I can do right now, maybe sometime in the future I'll get one. I do believe there are PAR readings on RC for these LEDs if you're interested.