Plenty of alternatives to DIY a LED build without soldering these days. Modular LED is one & there are PAR, MR16 & E27 base spotlight bulbs available. I think there are even star LED boards available with leads already on there for quick connection.

DUDE! That looks amazing. LED are the future of this hobby. I am a stronger believer once you try it out you will never go back to anything else. Tank looks good. I hope that powder blue is doing good.
BTW I just installed all 9 of the AI on my tank and boy is it ever bright. I fricken love it. Come by and check out the new 300 some time.

Just remember to dim it down or you risk bleaching out your corals.

I think 5 hours at full blast should be okay, don't you? I got mine amped up from 10-12 the 12-5 100% 5-11 amp down.

Any updates on your LED fixture? You mentioned you were still trying things out & it was a bit of a prototype at this point. Interested in any changes or news.

OK. Time for an update.

So we're onto V2 or Version 2 of my LED unit using 10w emitters. My friend built V2 with more aluminum bars to create a bigger heatsink so NO fans are needed. It's completely passive cooling and no problems even at full power. Warm but not hot to the touch. I changed out the mix of colours to 6 x blue 445 nm; 6 x blue 455 nm; 3 x 6500k whites; 3 x 20000k whites & 10 x 10000k whites. I like a very blue look to my display tank so I may even switch out some 10000ks for more blues.

As for how well V1 & V2 work for growing corals, I picked up a branching hammer mid-July with about 8 big heads and a few baby heads. Now it has a total of 47 heads on it (as of tonight) and the entire "branch" is covered when the lights are on. So roughly went from 17 to 47 heads in 3 months.

It took a while for the LPS to adapt to the higher intensity of 10w LED emitters but now I can blast full power if I want (280w total over a 165g) without any issues. I usually have the blues on 100% and the whites at 60-80% though cause I like the bluer look.

Will post pics this weekend hopefully.

looks good, any better picture of the fixture its self?

where are you guys getting these 10 watt LEDs from?

Steve

Mine were ordered from DealsExtreme.

Good components, but terrible service. Too long to get my last order of emitters.

fleabay

I've been sitting on the fence on the 1W / 3W LED's for the past year. I'm considering building a 10W LED setup for my 120g tank.

Do you have all the atinic's (blue 445nM and 455nM) LEDs, 10,000K & 6,500K and 10,000K on separate timers?

How do you have the 455nM, 445nM, 6500K, 10,000K and 20,000K LEDs arranged over the tank for each of the runs?

Thanks in advance!