Anyone with DIY LED experience?
 

I am looking to supplement my double strip t5ho with led day and lunar, but dont have a clue how, I have some cheap ones right now, but they arent doing the trick for me, and are very awkward in size. Anyone able to steer me in the right direction? I know I need between 10,000-12,000k and 420-460nm? if that sounds right.. but other then that I'm hooped.

Send an e-mail to Martin @ Modular LED ( sponsor here ) he will easily hook you up.

have you ever done a tank with just led? I thought about it, but I think I might like to keep my t5s still too

Go full led. I've seen enough good sustainable results that I'm making the switch from T5. Hopefully STUPID UPS will find my lights soon.

I've seen some tanks with full leds very nice, but $$$ Which I'm not rich with haha, If I can find a good deal I will, 20g shouldnt tank much anyways

I'm doing a fairly big LED build for my new tank...but if you want to do some simple supplimentation then I would look at Modular LED for some options as they have kits that anyone could use...experience or not.

yeah I'm there haha, I'm mostly looking for moonlight, and some daylight for the "shimmer" but if I could do a good led set up for under 250 I would go straight led

I did a straight LED retrofit into a Coralife hood through Modular. See the post in Martin's page. Cost me just over $200 for the parts, did the labour myself.

link? lol

Go into Modular LED in the vendor forums, it's about the 8th post down.

guess you would need a fan to keep them cool though?

So I think thats what I may do, but I dont have a hood or canopy, these can sit on the glass can they? what If I were to make a sealed wooden canopy with fans? would this be too risky with a t5 sitting inside?

I am doing a 300 gal 8'er totally LED with 272 LEDs ( 6 colors ), 5 drivers, 4-6 fans, 2 EVG control boards & 2 - 39" x 12" heat sinks.

Also it's all going in a canopy.

thats gnarly man, is it going to be a wood canopy? I'm guessing so, if so I suppose you need fans to keep it cool?

It will be a metal frame work skinned with Birch, going to have 2 - 3 fans per heatsink and a 2 - 3 fans bringing air in.

Cool thanks for the advice. You think if I keep my t5 strips the fans will keep it cool enough?

I have 24 Cree on my biocube 29 and it is more than enough what ever I want in it including sps. The whole kit cost me around 200 with dimmable controls by mean well, only part I wasn't really good at was soldering but if you go with modular LEDs you won't even need to solder. Btw I used pre tapped heat sink so if I ever want to upgrade to better led I can easily do it. If that's too much work then you should look at some led plug in bulbs that goes right into a normal light socket. For a tank that size a few of the par25 bulb will work just fine. One other option will be ai sol nano, $299 and you will have a state of art led fixture.

What type of led bulbs would be best in my case I have thought of free but I can only find 6000k

not too sure if this link will work or not, but does this look like a basic led set up? and this would cover my tank, does this look like a fair price? i'm shopping around:mrgreen::mrgreen: But I might just end up going with modulars, we'll see, only thing is I didnt see a 12x24 inch heatsink on modularled.ca, I think I would like to do all led.
Anyways if this link works, its a list I made up coming to $214.05 canadian, I'm just not sure I have everything there? I know I need a power supply, possibly 24v those are about $30

http://us-dc1-order.store.yahoo.net/...onId=ysco.cart

The cart doesn't work. Not sure if you have dirvers in there, but going with the meanwell's is the best option, they end up being cheaper. You don't need a pwoer supply to feed the meanwell drivers. power supply's for a full LED setup will be more than $30, that's a big power supply.

The big thing with modular LED is that you don't have to screw around with soldering them. Unless you already own a GOOD soldering iron, it is not worth doing dull DIY unless you are going to save enough to make buying one worth it. The crappy heat iron ones will fry LED's, lots of people have been able to do them with that, but you're tempting fate. With the modules you can change stuff around at later days too, which seems like a cool idea. And also... who wants to solder 80+ connections :P.

And with the heatsink.. there's many opinions on them, and they're all pretty much just that. Look around for info on them, there's lots, people generally go WAY overkill with them, which isn't always a bad thing.

Thanks and yeah, I get what your saying about modulars. I would love to have all leds... but I just bought my t5s like a month ago haha, just seems like I would be wasting money. Maybe I should just supplement them? I mean I can do a 24 led supplemental kit with 4- 10"x1" Heatsinks, this would allow leds on both sides of my t5s, both day and lunar.. but thats $270... I guess you gotta spend money to make money.. oh wait, I wont be making any money haha. I wonder if I should do LED bulbs the type that you can just screw into outlets, obviously thats work as well, or break the bank and go for the $399 AI sol lol.. this is a tough choice! I don't want to spend money the wrong way haha I could even do one modular 12 led kit, as I have a 12,000k 4 led strip with 2 blue 2 white, and I could just place everything accordingly, that would save me $135.. minus the cost of materials to build a hood, plus cooling fans as well.. so it would probably save me $30-$60 in the end. yikes.. this is too much to think about at bed time!!!

Yeah, LED's have a big up front cost, but... end up being cheaper than buying replacement bulbs, or close to the same. If you're thinking about the PAR lights that screw into the light bulbs, there's a guy who did a big tank with them on reef central. There's a new one now that has a good spread too, can't think of the name, they're usually known for being spotlightish, this one seems better.