LED reef light build guide with pics

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For a while now I have been watching people make the move to the newest technology in the reefing community. This post will include a few differant topics. Why use LED's. parts you need. And how to make them.





WHY USE LEDS?

LED lighting was an extremely important invention for the world today. Many reefers underrate them and do not understand how thyey can be so good and powerful for a reef. Well, not only are they powerful, but they can save you a lot of money in the end. T5, Metal Halide, PC, VHO, and all other lights are differant than LEDS in one very important way. LEDS emit one color spectrum, they do not release any other color of light. So if you get a blue 460nm led, it will only emit 460nm of light. Unlike all others which emit many differant colors of light, like an actinic fleurescent bulb actually releases red, yellow, purple, green, blue, and you name it. They are only more prominent in the blue spectrum. But as said before, since LED's only emit one color, their PAR levels are WAY higher than any other light. Corals use up mostly the blue, purple, and green spectrum. So that is what you want to try to aim for in lights.

Money wise, think about the amount of money you spend on changing your bulbs and electricity. A standard T5 light with 6 bulbs can cost you up to $125 a year. But,....if you run an LED setup 24 hours a day it will take 5 years for tehe bulbs to run out! That itself could save you $650 for 5 years. taht is enough to set up a new tank almost! Also LED's take up barely any energy, they run on DC power instead of AC power and can save you hundreds of dollars a year, especially if you run metal halides which suck up energy faster than a mop. Also with less power, LED's are still brighter than any other lights, and the shimmer is WAYYY more than any metal halide out there. This is because each LED shines in a more concentrated path, which allows the waves to bend and refract the light which creates the shimmer effect.

Overall, I hope that section makes some of you want to change your mind about lighting.:hmm3grin2orange:

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PARTS YOU NEED




There are many differant things you could use that can be adjusted according to your own preferences. Dimmable, Non-dimmable, power, color, and heat consumption.


LEDS

For this hobby standard 3mm, 5mm, and 10mm LEDS jsut do not have enough power to light a reef. We use high power LEDS that require objects like heatsinks to control the heat. CREE by far is the best LED to use for a reef. they generally cost $7 - $8 per LED, but you do not need many of them. I use Cree, and most everyone I know does too. The exact model you need are CREE XRE star leds. The color choice is your choice. For blue (actinic), you use the Royal blue model. I generally prefer a proportion of 1 blue to 1 white when building your light.


Power Supply

LEDS run on DC power rather than AC which is your average wall input. This is why you need a power supply to convert AC to DC power. Your wall input is generally about 120V AC power. You do not have to be picky about your power supply. I bought a 120V AC to 24V DC 1.7 amp adapter.

Drivers

These are EXTREMELY important when you are building your light! LEDS run on current ( measured in Amps) instead of volts of watts which run your fleurescent lights. If you have too much current runnign through an LED you will overdrive it which means you will shorten it's life very fast and possibly even break the LED. If you underdrive it it will jsut be dimmer. As for particular model, I prefer the brand Buckpuck for my drivers, buckpuck drivers come in many differant sizes, and you can buy an optional potentiometer which allows you to dim your LEDS to make a dusk/dawn effect. Drivers are too control the amount of current running through the LED and that is why they are so important.

Heatsinks

this is another very important part of building your light. A heatsink is used to take heat away fronm the LED so that the LED does not get overheated. if an LED gets overheated it will lose life and can possibly destroy it as well. LEDs have to be connected to the heatsink using a thermal compound and a few screws. these screws either HAVE to be nylon or steel with nylon washers. I prefer nylon screws because I personally dont want to be electricuted. A good place to buy heatsinks is a place called heatsinkusa.com. They offer many sizes and shapes for your heatsink.


Random other materials needed


You NEED a thermal compound. I used Dynex silver thermal compound I think. This is used to sllow heat transfer from the LED to the heatsink.

Soldering Iron- Just a standard soldering iron.
Solder- obviously need this to.
Wires preferably in differant colors.
A brain- you are going to need a brain so that you do not shock or burn yourself in this experiment.
Wire cutters
A drill with differant sized drill bits.




I am not responsible for any injuries, shocks, burns, loss of sanity, or brain cells in this experiment.
thanks!:ssmile:

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THE BUILD: Part three

For my light I started out small. i have a small 1 gallon pico reef with sps, lps, and softies in this tank. These are slightly old pics so the tank looks a lot better now.

here are the parts I used. Everything was bought from ledsupply.com. Extremely fast shipping.
First step. the leds have to have a tiny bead of thermal compound on the bottom of them. After the bottom of them is well coated you have to screw them into the heatsink with nylon screws. A drill press is best to use, but I used a normal handrill and did break one bit. Some people use steel screws with nylon washers but I stayed on the safe side. the LEDs cannot be to close to each other, they have to be spread apart nice enough so that the light is not in a perfect little spotlight.
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Next you have to wire the leds. the positive wire on the buckpuck gos to the positive area on the first led. then you connect the leds in a series circuit. By wiring them up, - to +, - to +, - to +, and so on and so forth. at the end you connect the negative wire of the buckpuck to the negative area on the last led.


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After that I connected a little adapter to the power supply area of the buckpuck. this is so I didnt have to cut the wires of the power supply. These are pretty easy to find around your house in old house phone holders adnw hatever else.
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here is a comparison of fleurescent light to LED's. I put this light over my 14g Biocube and it was better than the stock lights. But in my opinion this light can be used for sps in tanks up to 3 gallons, and softies up to 5 gallons.

And here is the comparison.

lowest setting. this is with the LED's dimmed all teh way.
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almost highest setting This is them set almost as high as they can go.
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The first light. A 13 watt compact fleurescent. eww
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And here is the tank with the leds on it. Only run on half power. I cannot run the LEDS on like anything more than 3/4 power. They are bright!
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Any questions are free to be asked

[Amazon]

Oh yeah. Everything not including tools costed me about $100 to make. It would have costed me LOTS more to buy one though.

[SunSchein89]

Very cool. Just had my first experiment with DIY LED lighting and it turned out great. It was only little 5mm 300 mcd lights for some moon lighting, but they're still useful little things and don't take up much power at all. Will be writing up a DIY for that shortly thumbs2: .

[Amazon]

Yep, high power leds and 5mm are wired a lot differant though. Did you use resistors?

[SunSchein89]

Mhmm... used an online calculator to figure out what resistors I needed. Made it a lot easier. Already broke off the positive side to one of the LEDs messing with it too much :rolleyes: gotta go out and buy another one.

[Amazon]

Radio Shack?

[SunSchein89]

Yeah, unfortunately. I was only going to buy a couple so I didn't want to waste my time buying bulk online. Now I'm thinking I probably should have. This was my first time working with LEDs or anything electrical really other than messing with my car stereo now and then so I wasn't very experienced. The whole thing is a learning process, though it doesn't seem that hard.

[Amazon]

Its not to hard. Messing with amps and exponential functions gets complicated though. I love sounding smart.

[Amazon]

i saw your thread! I have a few questions htough. Why didnt you use a plug in power source? Nad what are the specs on those LEDs and their resistors?

[SunSchein89]

Well, for one I don't have much room left on the power strip. Secondly, I figured for a first build it would be better to only mess with batteries rather than power straight out of the wall. A little less possibility of shock there :11: . The LEDs were supposedly 5 volt blues, but as per recommendation of someone on RadioShack's own website, I treated them as 3.5 volt LEDs. I then used THIS ([Only Registered Users Can See Links.]) tool to figure out what ohm resistors I needed. It came out to 150 and the next closest without going under was a 1/4 watt 220 ohm resistor. Seemed to work out pretty nicely in terms of brightness.

[Amazon]

oh ok, i get ya now. Do you have a marine tank? Or jsut a fresh?

[SunSchein89]

Just a fresh water tank. They're strictly for moon lighting when the other lights go off.