Quote:
Originally Posted by wingedfish
What is your projected cost, finished?
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Components I have (& on order) so far cost roughly $260. That includes 4 cool white arrays (6,000-7,000K), 10 Royal Blue arrays (452-455NM), 10 10,000K arrays, 12 heatsinks with built in fans, one 250 watt 12 VDC power supply & 2 sets of optics with holders. Probably won't use all 10 Royal Blues & may order some regular blues and/or the odd red, green, UV, combo array. Should be able to keep it between $300 & $400 I reckon. These are not Cree emitters & I don't care to get into the lumens for your buck debate here. I don't have much in the way of SPS coral and am confident that these generic arrays will do the job nicely for my LPS, softies & couple of SPS frags. I'm not in the coral farming business & provided there's moderate growth & the tank is pleasing to the eye, I'm good.
Still need to get the aluminum rails/supports, additional heat sinks and perhaps more power supplies & optics. Depending on how the power supply I ordered works, I may need to add current limiting drivers so as not to overdrive the LEDs. A couple of variable resistors are an option for dimming & limiting current, but those don't cost that much. Other miscellaneous hardware & wiring.
The optics & holders I have at the moment are actually the wrong size for the 10 watt arrays, the lens is probably ok, but the opening in the plastic holder looks to be designed for the higher wattage arrays, from 20 watts up. So I might just order a higher wattage array & see how that looks.