DIY LED's

joshuacohenjc

Reefing newb
hello, i am building an LED lighting fixture for my 75 gallon (4 foot) tank. in is 18 inch tall and the light will be 8-9 inches off the tank. i will be using 3w bulbs and i will be using half Cool white and half Royal blue. I'm not sure how many i should put though. i was thinking 28 (14 each color), but is that enough, or is it too much. i don't want to be limited to what i can put. i want to eventually be able to keep clams
thank you
 
UV Sterilizer and UV LED's are completely different


UV Sterilizers take microbes out of tank water. UV LED's give off light in the UV spectrum, and there is evidence that this spectrum is important in the color appearance of corals. LED's are not like traditional T5/MH lighting, they lack light in the red / UV spectrus. There is some evidence this causes corals to look less colorful in tanks lit by LED's. This is also why a tank lit by LED's looks dimmer to the human eye, even though many LED fixtures are putting out far more usable light (for the corals) than T5 or MH of similar wattage
 
^^this would depend on your drivers. I don't think I've seen drivers that dim down to 1%, maybe 10% but that's too bright for moonlight. I believe either rapidled or ledgroupbuy sells moonlight drivers. About 350ma max I think. The led
 
Oops didn't finish. The first led setup I did over my 10g was 6rb and 6cw. I didn't hate it but it wasn't impressive. Now I have 22leds. 6rb, 6cw, 6tv, 2TQ, 2deep red. Oh yea the color is impressive now. If you are going to go just white and blue. Then you need to do 2rb:1nw. (neutral white). But now the trend is to add more true violets and go fill spectrum like I did. Either way for a big tank like yours your minimum should be 48leds.
 
Ok so I am putting 52 LED's (48 for the day) (4 moon light)
In the 48 day lights, I will have 14 royal blue, 14 cool white, 10 UV, 5 red, 5 green.
If you think I should do it differently, tell me
 
The blues and whites need to be in a 2:1 ratio. So I would do more like 20rb:10nw. Remember that you can drive the whites at a higher amperage, so you can use less to have balance. Then compared to the other lighting you don't have enough true violet. 10 would be unnoticeable. True violet gets overpowered easily. So think like high teens for those. Too many reds will darken your tank (albeit you can dim it, more on this later) so think maybe 4 reds and 4 tq. Also too many reds could cause an increase in nuisance algae. Anyway note that it is dangerous to run true violet, deep red 660nm and turquoise at 700ma. Meaning they will burn up quickly. I run mine at 550ma sone run theirs at 600ma. Because of this I suggest having your reds, turquoise and true violet on their own channel (or all separately for total control) but if you Have to put them on a channel with another color then my vote goes to white. Because you are more prone to have this channel turned down some and your blues turned all the way up. Hth
 
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