LED lighting for a Nano

[seaweed88]

I am new to this forum and would like to say I do enjoy it here. I just picked up a 24 gallon nano with approx. 19 x 19 footprint. I would like to put LED lighting in the canopy. The tank is a Current. Does anyone have any experience with doing this? How hard and how much and most of all HOW?

Thanks
Mark

 

[baita83]

I just put an led set up in my 14 gallon biocube it cost about 200 for 12w 8 white cree and 4 blue cree leds. Used 1000mah buck pack on the white with a potentiometer ( wich isnt needed or that useful) and a 750mah on the blues. all lights were purchased from ledsupply.com shipping was really fast . I used a heatsink from heatsinkusa.com and don't feel its required at the base of the lights has never gotten over 85 degrees and they are capable of heating up to 160 i belive without incident so even if you just use sheet aluminum it should draw enough heat from them ( just my opinion) but then again when you spending 165 on lights whats another 35 for a heat sink to be safe. I got my solder and wire from radioshack used 22g. I am not familiar with your top so have no advice there. I have 12 watts on a 14 gallon about 0.86 wpg I know nobody uses that as a reference anymore but since leds are so new its hard to find how many watts to use I don't have par ratings on mine because i dont have a meter but I am growing acros and montis and have a monti on the sand floor with no fading in color infact it has gotten brighter and are growing much faster then i expected. as far as wireing goes its quite simple the buck pack are labled power in and led power just wire in strand going from positive to neg to positive and so forth till you get to the last in the strand take that negative back to the buck pack hook the power to to the buck pack i used a computer charger 24v 1.86w for both sets of light . make sure to have a multimeter to check voltage on the power supply my wires were brown and blue and i would have assumed brown was ground and i would have been wrong so make sure to check. also on led supply theres a great article with pictures good luck I absolutley love mine the best investment in my tank

 

[seaweed88]

Thank you for the reply. I am looking forward to giving this a try. Did I understand you correctly that you had around 200 in your lights. And that I could get a lot of info from the supplier?
Thanks Mark

 

[iceman0124]

Baita, got any pics of your LED's in action?

 

[baita83]

yeah total cost was right around 200 for 12 watts wich is plenty for a 14 gallon.....I only have internet when at work wich makes loading images tough so at this time id say no image.

the pattern is
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it seems to have great coverage even the 4w of blue covers the whole tank evenly......on the suppliers website it has a diy led project where it has an led aquarium light project it has great info and well defined pics with explantation its where i got my primary info ....if you have any specific questions send me a pm ill try to help im not a pro but i would like to see more people switching to leds.....my lfs recomended against it and said it wouldnt be work the risk of experiment. after only about one month of having it all my corals look better. my montipora spongodes has increased so much it was green with brown polyps now its green with bright green polyps and the new polyps are more then twice the size of the original. wich i wish i had picture to show everybody. and not only do the sps show improvements but my chalice has developed new brighter colors ( i was worried it would have too much light and damage it).......basically I am more then impressed with my current set up

 

[seaweed88]

Cool thanks for the help. I picked up the Aqua Pod and I have decided to make it Ricordeas and Zoas. The canopy is 17 x 20 and this should be the perfect size to experiment with.

 

[evilc66]

I just put an led set up in my 14 gallon biocube it cost about 200 for 12w 8 white cree and 4 blue cree leds. Used 1000mah buck pack on the white with a potentiometer ( wich isnt needed or that useful) and a 750mah on the blues. all lights were purchased from ledsupply.com shipping was really fast . I used a heatsink from heatsinkusa.com and don't feel its required at the base of the lights has never gotten over 85 degrees and they are capable of heating up to 160 i belive without incident so even if you just use sheet aluminum it should draw enough heat from them ( just my opinion) but then again when you spending 165 on lights whats another 35 for a heat sink to be safe. I got my solder and wire from radioshack used 22g. I am not familiar with your top so have no advice there. I have 12 watts on a 14 gallon about 0.86 wpg I know nobody uses that as a reference anymore but since leds are so new its hard to find how many watts to use I don't have par ratings on mine because i dont have a meter but I am growing acros and montis and have a monti on the sand floor with no fading in color infact it has gotten brighter and are growing much faster then i expected. as far as wireing goes its quite simple the buck pack are labled power in and led power just wire in strand going from positive to neg to positive and so forth till you get to the last in the strand take that negative back to the buck pack hook the power to to the buck pack i used a computer charger 24v 1.86w for both sets of light . make sure to have a multimeter to check voltage on the power supply my wires were brown and blue and i would have assumed brown was ground and i would have been wrong so make sure to check. also on led supply theres a great article with pictures good luck I absolutley love mine the best investment in my tank

Glad you have joined the LED world. Your numbers aren't quite right though. 12 LEDs at the current you are running puts you at ~35W (whites are running at 3.7v x 1000mA = 3.7W each, and the blues are 3.5v x 700mA = 2.45W each).

Also, a flat plate of aluminum doesn't give you any safety factor if the fans die. The 130-160C die temperature that you made note of is the die temperature, not the temperature of the star at the base of the heatsink, which can see as much as a 30C difference in temperature between the die and the pcb.

Seaweed88, if you want to see a lot of builds that are similar to your tank (BC29, NC24/28, they all build the same), go check out the DIY LED Project thread in the lighting section over at Nano-Reef. Tons of info there on exactly what you are looking to do.