Are your black boxes wore out or too white?

[trido]

I have nine of them now days and knowing they are cheaply built fully expected to be replacing them at 25000 hours or five years. It turns out, they don't last that long, About half that IMO. Under ideal conditions a bridgelux emitter is rated for 25 thousand hours. A Cree emitter is supposed to last 50,000. A reef tank is not ideal conditions at all. Salt creep, humidity, enclosed hoods and dust all play a factor in wearing out all of our equipment. Our cheap black boxes have very thin heat sinks if they have one at all. Add dust onto the fan blades from a year or two of use and you have the perfect recipe for burned up emitters.
Just because your fixtures are getting old does not mean they are trash. They are easily rebuilt with a little bit of DIY patience.

Here is a picture showing how easy it is to spot a failing emitter when your lights are off. There are seven of them on this fixture.

Rather than replacing just the seven, its worth the time to replace all 24 Royal Blues on the channel so you dont have to take your fixture off to repeat half the process in six to eight months when the rest of them begin to fail.

Right now I dont have any soldering pictures, but will take some when I rebuild another fixture in the upcoming week or so.
This is what a new or rebuilt fixture looks like.

And the two side by side. In my next post, I'll show how I also changed the white channel by removing some 4500K whites so I can run both channels at the same percentage for a 14K look for more growth.

 

[trido]

The custom tuned Evergrows I bought from my LFS have what I consider an almost perfect blend of white and blue. I run my display tank lights at 75% blue and 72% white. I have removed some of the optics on my frag tank lights and run both channels at 100%. The frag tanks are bluer than my display. They have a full Royal Blue channel like all others but the white channel is what, in my opinion, makes the diffference. Here is a picture of the custom tuned fixture I've been using for over three years now. On the white channel there are 18 12K cool whites, 4 UV, 2 Red, 2Cyan, and 4 470 Nm baby blues.

Quite a few fixtures for sale have too much white in them for an aesthetically pleasing look and most reefers are forced to turn the white channel down to almost half of what the blues are set at. This is a fixture with far too much white in most peoples opinion

I tore the first one of these down, fully rebuilt the blue channel and then worked on altering the white channel. I removed all six of the 4500K whites, relocated both of the red and added six 470 Nm Baby blues. Unfortunately, one of the reds died during the process so I added a single 4500K white back into the place I wanted the red.

Here is the rebuilt light
.

While rebuilding this light I was surprised at how dirty the glass was inside of the fixture. It was completely hazy and needed cleaned. I also cleaned the three fans real well with a bristle brush.
The next picture shows the two fixtures side by side. They are both turned all the way down but the clean fixture appears far brighter. Partly because the glass is clean on both sides and also because it has over 36 new emitters. They are both turned all the way down.

 

[Retro Reefer]

A friend had 6 black box's running over 3 different tanks, just like clockwork each of the blues went dim then died almost exactly at the 3 year mark.. He wasn't to happy about having to replace all those lights at the same time and rebuilding would have been a lot cheaper I'm sure.

 

[McMullen]

Thank you for posting this. I'm going to redo my Ocean Revive units like this.

 

[trido]

I was able to buy RB emitters from eBay for under 40 to rebuild five fixtures.

 

[McMullen]

Do you use just royal blue on your blue channel?

 

[trido]

Do you use just royal blue on your blue channel?

Yes, RB only. there is enough room on the white channel for every thing else you need.

 

[Bbaz123456]

Do you just buy, royal blue bridgelux LEDs? 3 watt.
I will have to grab some and try it out.
I have one fixture right now that the blue channel trips the gfci every time it comes on. I haven't taken the time to troubleshoot yet but it may just be a shorted emitter.
I have been running 100% whites and wow does that grow some serious algae! Definitely would like to get rid of some of the 4500k's

 

[Justdrew]

Any links to the emitters to order?

 

[LostInTheDark]

The bad part about the diodes burning out is that is is very hard to see it as its happening. They slowly dim and take a while to burn out. This happened to my Ocean Revive units and I lost most of my SPS until I figured out what was happening.

 

[trido]

Do you just buy, royal blue bridgelux LEDs? 3 watt.
I will have to grab some and try it out.
I have one fixture right now that the blue channel trips the gfci every time it comes on. I haven't taken the time to troubleshoot yet but it may just be a shorted emitter.
I have been running 100% whites and wow does that grow some serious algae! Definitely would like to get rid of some of the 4500k's

I did. A pack of 50 is about $40. I doubt that a shorted emitter is the cause of the GFCI tripping. . There is probably something wrong with one of the drivers. FWIW, a lot of reefers do not run the GFCI on lighting. the high humidity is known to cause problems. I'd try ir without the GFCI in a remote location and see if any problems arise.

Any links to the emitters to order?

No, I dont want to promote any one vendor from China. Just type Bridgelux LED emitter into the search bar and you will be bombarded with a million options. Just make sure you buy emitters in the right Nm range.

The bad part about the diodes burning out is that is is very hard to see it as its happening. They slowly dim and take a while to burn out. This happened to my Ocean Revive units and I lost most of my SPS until I figured out what was happening.

This is true. My SPS struggled for months before I finally took a hard look at my ever darkening emitters. That's why threads like this are important.

 

[McMullen]

Can't wait for you to redo your next light. I will try and copy what you do.

 

[happyhourhero]

Thats pretty awesome that you do that man. I suck at the DIY and just buy the SB Reef Light retro boards for $70.

 

[Jaycoach]

Great post

 

[Triggreef]

Great post

I agree, I'll be doing this as well when the time comes. If you have reef breeders you can also just buy a whole new panel with all new led and its a cheap plug and play option. But I agree there are just too many whites on most if not all fixtures. You should be able to run both channels at the same setting without an overly white look.

 

[MikeyAl]

Thank you for posting this. I'm going to redo my Ocean Revive units like this.

I am not a big DIY guy. I also have the OR lights. How would you redo to match the above? What is the process?

 

[redfishbluefish]

I had a similar problem with two Apollo LED fixtures I had....without going back and looking, about at the three year mark. The blues were still lit, but had a black char on them.




I really don't know if it was the reason, but I blamed the "cooked" LEDs on the poor job they did with the thermal compound. I documented everything HERE.....including the source of the Chinese replacement LEDs. It's been a little under a year and, knock on wood, they are working perfect.

 

[McMullen]

Not yet sure how I will redo my OR, I too am not a DIY'er. I will copy something from @trido and now @redfishbluefish

 

[LostInTheDark]

I was hesitant to redo mine but a local reefer walked me through the first one. The diodes are available at Reefbreeders or through Amazon. It was really as simple as remove the non working ones and replace them with new ones. You can use an AA battery to check the polarity and match it to the board which was marked. While I was in there I replaced a few of the white withe blues and gave the lights a good cleaning. I was able to reuse most of the existing solder and thermal grease. Each light took under an hour.

 

[redfishbluefish]

@LostInTheDark , I'm not sure if it's universal, but the LED beads I purchased (as well as the old ones coming off), had their negative side marked. I didn't have to use a battery (or multimeter) to determine polarity. My board was also clearly marked with the positive and negative sides.

You can see the little negative punch-out just to the right of the bead.




Good stuff!!!