RapidLED BioCube 29 LED Retrofit!

FishBeard

FishBeard

New member
This is not so much a guide as it is a "look-what-i-can-do". Since the fiancee is ready to move on up (from the east side...) from her current 14 gallon BioCube, I decided that since we needed to replace the bulbs in the 29 anyways, I might as well set her up with some decent lighting from the get-go. I chose the RapidLED kit mainly for its competitive price, and the fact that we never even had fans in the hood and needed them anyways, since they come as part of the kit along with a speed controller.

So anyways, enough of the jibba jabba, and on to the tasty eye candy I know your all waiting for:

Oh lookie, a box, how totally interesting!
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And now the box is open, big whoop...
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After eating the free snack they included (*free snack was stale BTW...)
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My OCD gets the better of me and everything gets sorted in some maniacal arrangement:
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Those idiots at RapidLED drilled and tapped way too many holes, my kit only has 20 LEDS!
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14 hours later, everything has been unboxed, making sure all boxes are in perfect condition:
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Apparently, white LED's are ghosts, or possibly vampires, since they didnt show up in this pic:
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Got to the halfway point, this is where I had to switch hands cause the one got tired of grippin and twistin...
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And this is about when the other hand gave out, good thing too cause I finished just in time!
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Fast Forward past all the boring pre-tinning and soldering and this is what I end up with:
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Tuning the Royal Blues to 750mA:
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Tuning the Cool Whites to 1.21 jiggawatts, or uh 1050mA I mean:
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Lights all work, WOOT! Here they are at about 5%, the lowest they can go. BTW, how low can you go?
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And here they are turned all the way up to "Melt your face off"...
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A couple pics to verify, yes, I am a NERD! Yes, your eyes do not deceive, I DID label the drivers:
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For posterity, this ones for me, not you guys, so I remember how to solder 20 LED's again next time:
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So I was like, "Hey Baby, wanna check whats under my hood?" and shes all like "What, that little thing?"
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Waste not, Want not. I even ended up reusing the old PC wire harness, it was destined for the trash anyways:
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Someday, Im gonna call upon you for a favor, but for now you can just hang out until you are needed:
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Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder? [pause] These go to eleven...
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Check out that rear end:
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That's it, I appreciate you wasting 10 minutes of your life for me.
 
lunacris said:
Looks good. Good job. Is there a sheild on it.
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Yes, there is a shield on it, it just got in the way for all the pics. There will be pictures in the future once the tank gets emptied, cleaned out and restocked with new sand, the rock i have cycling in the garage, and after her fish and corals are moved over. The color is awesome, and I love how we can fine tune the color temperature between the blues and whites.
 
Nice build but I think with that many xp-g whites it will over power the blue and u wouldn't get as much of color pop from ur tank. On my build I have 14 rb, 9cw, 1 red. I was thinking about getting xp-g and reefledlights recommended me to get only 6 whites cuz they run brighter. The usual ratio is 2b-1w. Mayb I'm wrong though. Would like to see pics when ur tank is ready. Once it's over ur tank ull b amazed on the difference of lighting it does.
 
The reefer said:
Nice build but I think with that many xp-g whites it will over power the blue and u wouldn't get as much of color pop from ur tank. On my build I have 14 rb, 9cw, 1 red. I was thinking about getting xp-g and reefledlights recommended me to get only 6 whites cuz they run brighter. The usual ratio is 2b-1w. Mayb I'm wrong though. Would like to see pics when ur tank is ready. Once it's over ur tank ull b amazed on the difference of lighting it does.
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It's already up and running, and the ratio is personal preference, even running the whites hotter at 1050mA I have the blues dialed down lower than the white to get a good color output that we are both happy with. When both sets of lights are at full, the tank is just way too blue for either of us. She really would prefer a higher white to blue ratio to get closer to a 12000k color, but the approximate 15000k color I'm getting from the fixture now is good enough to make her happy. Right now I have white around 70% and blue around 50-55% since its just fish with a few scrap corals, even at this output I see no reason she couldn't keep SPS at those levels. I really think 100% output would bleach out and burn up most corals on the tank.
 
Yea ur right it is personal preference. Keep us updated with the xp-g. I'm interested in getting 2 for my setup for more growth.
 
I don't see any optics on there. I understand that adding optics makes it more probable that you'll get a "spotlighting" effect when they are so close to the water. But without the optics it typically takes more LEDs to light an area (vs. less LEDs utilizing optics). So what I want to know is if those 20 LEDs are enough to light that tank without optics on 'em. Also what kind of corals are you keeping in that tank?
 
Butters said:
I don't see any optics on there. I understand that adding optics makes it more probable that you'll get a "spotlighting" effect when they are so close to the water. But without the optics it typically takes more LEDs to light an area (vs. less LEDs utilizing optics). So what I want to know is if those 20 LEDs are enough to light that tank without optics on 'em. Also what kind of corals are you keeping in that tank?
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The lights were more than adequate to keep any corals you could put in the tank. Im not sure if I ever posted info before elsewhere but without optics, and both channels running at 100%, I had the tank PAR tested with only 1" of sand and filled with saltwater. The tank read in the 250+ range around the perimeter, and 350+ directly below the center of the fixture at the sand, and 750+ PAR just below the water surface under the fixture.

Unfortunately for me, even after putting the time and money into setting her up with this great light and getting her upgraded from the smaller biocube 14, she quickly lost interest, and the entire system was sold to another member on the site.

We kept various soft and Lps corals in the tank, and at even less than 50% brightness on each channel all the corals in the tank couldn't have been happier. One torch coral that I had placed a little too high did bleach slightly but since moving it back to the smaller biocube under the pc lights, has been recovering and regaining its color.
 
Butters said:
Those numbers are impressive. Especially without the optics.
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I don't have the information in front of me but iirc the cree LEDs included in the kit I built have a normal 90* lens on the diode. I'm not sure if adding optics would have done anything but cost more. The fixture was only a couple inches from the water, not hanging feet above the tank where the optics would serve a purpose to focus more of the light straight down into the tank.
 
Well I bought some leds from rapidled and put them in the hood of my five gallon. I started with 16. 8 xp-g cool whites and 8 xt-e blues. But I got the bigger driver so i needed more leds cause it would blink out when I tried to turn it up. So now I have 12 xp-g whites and 12 xt-e blues. And added two blues and violet /uv for a night/high noon effect. And on the 24 leds I have a mix of 80 and 60 degree lenses . I'm more then happy with it. I have both driver set at 350 ma and still only turn it up 25% . But i have 28 with lenses on a five gallon. I wanted to give it a shot since everyday I use leds lighting in different applications . I'm very happy with it. Soon I will take it off my five gallon and build another it useing smaller drivers and less leds and build it into my 28 nano. And and summing part is great for my octopus tank build.
 
saltysweet1 said:
Well I bought some leds from rapidled and put them in the hood of my five gallon. I started with 16. 8 xp-g cool whites and 8 xt-e blues. But I got the bigger driver so i needed more leds cause it would blink out when I tried to turn it up. So now I have 12 xp-g whites and 12 xt-e blues. And added two blues and violet /uv for a night/high noon effect. And on the 24 leds I have a mix of 80 and 60 degree lenses . I'm more then happy with it. I have both driver set at 350 ma and still only turn it up 25% . But i have 28 with lenses on a five gallon. I wanted to give it a shot since everyday I use leds lighting in different applications . I'm very happy with it. Soon I will take it off my five gallon and build another it useing smaller drivers and less leds and build it into my 28 nano. And and summing part is great for my octopus tank build.
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28 leds on a five gallon tank at full output would make a betty crocker slow cooker
 
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