From my experience with some experimenting over thinking the layout of various LED colors doesn't pay off. I did the exact same thing with my fixture and spend a bunch of time and effort to layout each color so they were all distributed evenly and mixed in as much as possible with my hopes of avoiding color spots and lack of blending.
The fact is it's not that important. You're better off doing rows off each color just like a T5 fixture. It keeps things much simpler and wiring will be easier, plus might even be better for heat distribution. Believe it or not you won't notice a difference in color distribution on a tank your size if you do things like this or stagger them all over the place.
One thing I also would have changed on mine is using 1W for colors like green and red, they don't really offer much except some additional spectrum adjustment which is purely just for effect. The problem with the 3W is they are still a tad bright even when fully dimmed since you can only dim down to about 5% or so and. I have 7 3W reds and I never put them past 10%. I've also actually had to completely turn my reds off for a while due to crazy algae blooms which immediately stopped with the red cut off.
Also get yourself an infrared temp gun and watch the temp on those LEDs, I found they run a little warmer than the typical star mounted ones. Doubt you'll have a problem with that heat sink though but maybe just encase, especially those ones that are really close to each other.
Last edited by sphelps; 12-09-2011 at 10:56 PM.
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12-09-2011, 10:51 PM
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