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Who would have thought the most stressful part would be lighting the tank! If anyone has any good advice, please feel free to pass it on.
Here are my current choices on the table (in no particular order): Pacific Sun Metis CRP 4x100W -- Right now, the top of my options. This light has everything that I want and more. It's by far the cleanest unit and will give me a lot of room to get into the tank. The down sides are the price and upgradeability. Aqua Illuminations 6x75w pendants -- I've *virtually* seen many of these in action (YouTube, how-to’s, reviews etc...). I have a very good idea of what these can do, the price is still slightly high, but I don't want to get stuck in a void of having to add more and more expensive pendants to offset the spotlighting these are known to have. DIY 4 panels of 42 Cree XP LEDs (cool white and royal blue) -- I have the knowledge and experience of soldering and working with electronics. The price is much lower than the other options and I can change out anything that dies on my own... Most likely having spare parts on hand. Huge down side is looks, I don't have the resources to fabricate an awesome fixture for DIY. I've considered T5's and MH, but I’m the kind of guy to forget about the initial purchase and gripe about ongoing maintenance costs. With LED I believe it's a pay now or pay later situation. |
Lights are now chosen and ordered!
I'll be going with 4 seperate lights with 36 3w Cree LED's on each! 24 Royal Blue's and 12 Cool whites. The best part is the ease of building these lights, pre-drilled and tapped heatsync, BJB connectors (solderless) and optics that click right into the BJB! |
Which lights are they? Have a link?
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I purchased them from http://www.reefledlights.com
There are many options, I just built each kit individually to get all the parts at a better price. After that I added a few items that I needed to complete the kit. They ship USPS and it's VERY affordable. Here is a breakdown of what was ordered: 48 Cree XP-E Kit – 48 XP-E Royal Blue
10 x 5 Watt 1 Ohm Resistor 25 x CREE XP-G R5 Cool White 3W LED On Star
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Picked up the rest of what I needed from Marine Aquaria. They always seem to have stock on special items and Harvey went out of his way to help me out!
Huge thanks guys! |
Received some equipment today!
I'm quite impressed by the Skimz SM201, it's a sexy beast! http://i1194.photobucket.com/albums/...emah/sm201.jpg Several months into this hobby and I'm already WAY over my head. http://i1194.photobucket.com/albums/...emah/parts.jpg Killer sump from Marine Aquaria (Super Dart Gold just fits beside it). http://i1194.photobucket.com/albums/...nemah/sump.jpg |
your light idea is looking good...one issue the concerns me is that the ELN drivers are known to cause harmonic issues when you use more than a few of them together...which could result in your in-wall wiring heating up and potentially being a fire risk. There is a lot of info on this on the DIY led thread on RC. That's why many people are going with the HLG driver and going parallel instead of serial. I suggest you look into it before your build. Otherwise...looking awesome:-)
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I believe it'll be fine. I appreciate your concern, it's a good one for sure.
Essentially the harmonic and inrush issues come with startup. I'll only have two drivers come online at any given time. The Blue's will just dim at night and never really turn off and the whites will come on in pendant pairs (one driver per pendant for whites). I've read cases where people are powering 8 of these things without issues. I'm not sure I can change my order or design at this point, so I guess we will see. |
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I've always been treated very well when I go there as well, it's nice when people know your name when you walk in a store. I can't believe I missed this build thread... look great so far! I'm looking forward to seeing pics of it lit up with the LED's. |
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