125 Gallon LED Light Change Over
 

I wanted to change over from my coralife 48" light fixture, which had 2 150W MH bulbs, and 2 96W PC bulbs to LED. After carefull consideration, I decided to go with modularled due to price, ease of construction, being very close to me, and top end LED's. My components are as follows:
2 red LED boards
2 green LED boards
6 blue LED boards
14 royal blue LED boards
6 neutral white HEW LED boards
8 cool white HEW LED boards
2 75W drivers
1 Mean-Well non-dimming driver

Here is some shots of what my current tank looks like prior to the change over:
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...r/P1000772.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...r/P1000773.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...r/P1000774.jpg

I have used aluminum channel to attach the LED's to from a fellow canreefer. If he would like to post on here who he is, I will leave that to his choice. I owe a big thank you to him for getting me the channel at a great price, delivered right to my door, and cut to the exact measurements I needed. Here is some pictures of the channel attached to my canopy.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...r/P1000760.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...r/P1000759.jpg

I put a screw on either end of the aluminum channel into the wood to hold them in place.

Here is a shot of the LED's, drivers and lenses attached.
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...r/P1000770.jpg

Here is a shot of the white line with 2 blue boards on.
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...r/P1000771.jpg

The pictures don't do the lights justice as they are super bright. My eyes are still bugging me from looking at it.
There is a space in the centre on the bars closest to the bottom where there are no LED's. This is where my overflow is located, so no lights were needed. I didn't put any lenses on the red or green LED's as I just wanted to spread out their color. They are on a line with 2 blue LED boards that is non-dimmable.
I need 12 more extension connectors, and then this is ready to go on the tank. I wasn't sure how many extensions I was going to need, and got way too few.
The white base boards are on the canopy as I am putting a piece of acrylic that will sit on them to prevent any water from hitting the LED's and drivers.

All for the cost of less than one Radion.

WOW that is sick lighting for a whole tank for less then one fixture that would do half the tank. Can you do sunrise, sunset (lights start up from one side and move to the other while getting brighter throughout the day)? Thats the only feature I really want, thunderstorms would be cool but not needed. great job on a nice light fixture and reef tank

I have 3 timers that I was using on for my current fixture that I will hook each line into. The blue/red/green line will come on first, followed by the blue line, followed by the white line to simulate sunrise. Sunset will work in the opposite order. I can get a controller to run this system if I want to make it fancy.

I forgot to mention, I have 4 fans that will sit on top of the channels that I had used to cool my tank due to the MH's.

Thank you to Martin for all of your help on this. Once I get my extensions, I will post pictures of the finished product on the tank.

]I got my extensions on Friday and here are some pictures with LED's.

Red-Green-Blue line only:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...r/P1000780.jpg

Blue line only:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...r/P1000779.jpg

White line with 2 blue's:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...r/P1000781.jpg

All 3 together:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...r/P1000782.jpg

A few closer shots:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...r/P1000783.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...r/P1000784.jpg

There seems to be a lot of colour in the red-green-blue photo. Maybe it's just a fluke of that one photo. Would you mind taking a few more shots of your tank with the red-green-blue lights only to see how things look? Thanks :)

Cool. How do you like the final color look? Nice and blue I see. Do you noticed much color difference in the corals?

Here is a couple closer ones with just the red-green-blue line with 12 total LED's.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...r/P1000797.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...r/P1000798.jpg

Not the greatest photo's with the reflection. There is a lot of light given out by that line for some reason. I crawled up above the fixture to make sure that all the rest were off because there just seems to be too much light for that few of LED's.

Cant believe how bright that is with just 12 LEDs

The final look is maybe a little too purple, but still awesome. My corals look a lot different(way better, and I just can't believe the color of my yellow tang. My frogspawn and hammer corals just pop where as before, they were almost brownish. All the corals/clams/anemones are fully open as well. No issues there what-so-ever so far.

Oh, and my bubbles are back on my RBTA's. I haven't seen those forever. Just amazing!

Yah, it looks like Christmas in there with just them on. LOL

There seems to be a huge amount of light with just the red-green-blue! The colours look vivid and not as blued-out as they do with all the lights on at once.

What do you think of the red-green-blue compared to all the lights on at once? The camera might not be capturing the scenes well enough to convey the true colours that are appearing in your tank, so your observations are what I'm looking for.

Maybe if you took more photos with the rest of the room's lights out later in the evening, reflections wouldn't be a problem.

Also, can you dim certain colours?

Thanks again :)

In person, the colors don't appear washed out when all are on, but rather, very bright. Each line seems to bring out different colors in the corals.
I can dim the blue line and the white lines, but the red-green-blue line can't be dimmed. I honestly wasn't expecting very much light so didn't think to go with a dimming driver but it is shockingly bright. I have all driver's on full right now, and probably will keep them that way as I love the mixture, even after playing with dimming each line.

I'd love to see more photos of various colour combinations while dimmed and not dimmed and whatever you have time and inclination to do. I'm contemplating a tank upgrade and your experience adding the red and green opens up a whole new avenue of exploration.

Darn, if I could swing it and it was okay with you, I'd consider going to Ponoka to see your lights :)

Hi I'm just wondering are those just the 1w leds? I see you have lenses on them, I'm planning on doing a larger tank in the future between 125-250 (havent decided yet) but am looking to go all led any tips? :)

These are all 3w LED's & from what I have been told the Reds & Greens are very bright & might have to be turned down a bit in order to get the corals just right.

Looks good PR, can't wait to get mine going now seeing yours.

One question though, is that where you are leaving your drivers? The only reason I ask is I have been told that they should be keeped as far away from the water as possible.

I am leaving my drivers at those locations. There is an acrylic shield preventing water from hitting them that covers the whole inside of the canopy. If anyone is interested in viewing the setup in person, send me a PM. The tank is located at the office I work at in Ponoka.

And these are all 3W LED's, with the white's being the newest HEW's.

LEDs
 

what are the dimensions of your tank?

48 inches long, 25 inches wide, 24 inches high

Thats what I was hoping you would say :thumb:

Here is a link to this thread on reefcentral.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2103085

I turned down the blue a little today. It was just too much blue/purple for my liking. I can't believe in some threads that people were recommending a 2:1 blue to white ratio. If anything, I wish I would have put 2 more white on the white line rather than having the 2 blue. That's just my tastes though as I like a more natural looking tank.

I like the Idea of using Aluminum channeling versus heatsinks, I honestly dont have a clue about any of this, but from what I gather heat sinks are aluminum(?) and are basically something to mount on while evenly dispersing heat? I think that the channel could have the same effect especially place the way you have them, lots of air flow can get in, I think I would go this route personally when I do this.

The channel's are aluminum and do the same work as heatsinks. I have fans sitting on them like most people do with a heatsink. I just ran my fingers on the backs on the channels after being on all day and there is just a slightly warm feeling where the LED's are on the opposite side. I'd say they are doing their job very well.
My main reason for going with channel's is because of the way my canopy was built. There were slots on either sides for the channels to just sit on perfectly, so I didn't have to worry about how to hang heatsinks. Plus, I could space things out a little better then as well so it worked out perfectly.

yeah you can pick that stuff up just about anywhere too! provided you have a grinder to cut it if they won't on site. thanks for sharing this build! its making me think of my future project a little more! lol

Here are some updated photo's at approximately the one year mark.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...6E815AB9A8.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...6E72FDC380.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...6E6B95F137.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...6E6337C47D.jpg

Lights are still working great with no issues or problems. Corals are clearly growing and now at the point of fighting for space. Photographs are taken with my iPhone, so not the greatest quality.

Thanks again modularled.ca!

Looks great!