Looking for people who've done a DIY LED kit

I would go with maybe 8 or 10 Cool Whites and either 4 or 2 Neutral White. Neutral has a much yellower look, but like I said with the blues above, Neutral has a different spectrum then cool whites, so I think it can add something for coral growth. My advice for your green and red is to not put an optic on them so they have a wider spread and you don't get spotlights of red and green on your rocks/sand. Again I don't know enough about UV, might be worth researching more about. I would really recommend the solderless version of the kit, and you can still solder the UV and Orange/Red and Neutral White into the solderless ones. The solderless ones have the ability to connect with both of them and you don't have to worry about soldering the majority of the project. The only problem I see is that the drivers can only handle a max of 14 LEDs, so you would need 4 drivers with what you are planning. What I did to only use three was 1/3 White (12) 1/3 Royal Blue (12) 1/3 Color (2 Red, 2 Green, 8 Blue). 12 LEDs per driver is a safe place to be as drivers will wear out quicker with 14 per string. Maybe you could do 10 CW, 2 Neutral White on one, 12 Royal Blue on the next, and one the last driver do 2 red, 2 green, 2 uv, 6 blue (Just a thought). You need a fan for the top (which the fan is designed with a guard on only one side, but to get the best cooling effect you should flip it to the air is pushing down) and you need a splash guard. I have to clean my splash guard weekly from salt spray, so imagine all that salt spray hitting the electrical connecting on the leds. You also need a way to mount your fixtures to your wall or canopy. I bought wire at homedepot to extend my connection for the leds at the heatsink to the drivers in another room. The drivers get hot and need space between each other. Alright I think I covered everything, maybe I will remember more in the morning.
 
Thanks for the response. I dont think i'll need a fan yet. My canopy is open in the back and a 3" section on the top so it doesn't hold much heat.

As far as mounting i was leaning towards the u-channel way. I like ur idea about "Maybe you could do 10 CW, 2 Neutral White on one, 12 Royal Blue on the next, and one the last driver do 2 red, 2 green, 2 uv, 6 blue" I'm going to probably make 2 "fixtures" as i have a center brace and cant put anything above that.

1st fixture would have 5 cw, 1 nw, 6 Rb, 1R, 2 g, 1 uv, 3 blue, obviously 2nd fixture the same. I'd just have to wire the fixtures together. Can u use acrylic for a splash guard or will that take away to much of the lighting. I would think that a solder connection would be more "salt" proof compaired to a connector.
 
You do need a fan, while LEDs run a lot cooler then MH and don't add to water temp, the cooler you can get your LEDs to run the longer they will last. The small price of the fan is worth the longer life you will get from your LEDs. When I forgot to program my fan on my apex and my LEDs were running at full, I burnt myself on the heatsink. When the fan is on, the heatsink is cool to the touch.

As for a splash guard, if you are ordering from rapidled, just buy their heatsink kit (fan, splash guard, and heatsink). If you make one yourself you need to get the right material because if not the splash guard will melt / distort from the heat and you will lose par. The kit they sell is very nice and the splash guard and fan are a nominal cost.

As for salt proof, you don't want any salt near any of your metal connections and the solderless ones would be better in my opinion as they house the connection inside a piece of plastic. If you are set on soldering the whole thing, go for it, but I can tell you from experience it is a lot easier to use the solderless LEDs as much as possible and solder the rest as needed.

Also when the time comes to tune your driver you can just turn them all the way up with Cool White and Royal Blue as the max of the driver is like 1300 mA and the LED's max is 1500 mA. With your other colors you would need to set them to the lowest which will be either Red or UV (700mA). Make sure you read the instructions carefully on how to do this step or you can burn out all your LEDs and ruin your drivers.

Let me know if you have any questions.
 
yeah i wont be doing this alone, I'll probably have one of the guys on here help me out. I'll check in to the heatsink kits. Thanks
 
There's a lot of info I can comment on when I have the time, but the 10V power plug for the dimming, you just need one. You can split the power to multiple pots instead of having one for each driver.
 
Honestly instead of pots..... a controller is much much better..........easier to "zone" in on the correct brightness with accuracy, set and forget versus: I think thats where I had the pot set????
 
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