Linear vs Cluster LED Layout? (1 Viewer)

[wardda]

Looking for some advice on my new LED build. In the past I had a 48 LED (4 row 12 led each) build over my 90g tank. I'm adding some more leds to bring it up to a 72 led build using a 43"x8" heat sink so I now have a lot more options as far as layout. So I'm looking for some advice as to how the experts would layout their lighting system.

The tank is your standard 48"x16" 90g. The heat sink will sit 9" above the water, in my linear build I have 60 deg lenses on the front two rows over the sand bed, and 80 deg on the back two. Rockwork is your basic pile of rock sloping front to back with the back end about 12" under the water line. I currently get very even light with the layout I have but I get a lot of disco/shimmer if I have significant surface turbulence.

The mix I'm going to is 24 Royal Blue Cree XTE, 12 Blue Cree something, 8 CW XPG, 16 NW XPG, and 12 Steve's LED Violet. I was originally thinking I would just do 4 rows of 18 in the new build, thinking that would give more light and better blending, but I have been seeing many people saying clustering is better.... but since I have no experience in it I wanted to get your feedback.

 

[Reefer Sutherland]

If you could cater to your tank, and put a few clusters over areas of your tank you wish to highlight, i think that would be neat. Also you could throw in some blues or something in between the clusters to provide a nice hue to the 'not-so-full-of-coral' spots.

 

[Nanofreak79]

If you could cater to your tank, and put a few clusters over areas of your tank you wish to highlight, i think that would be neat. Also you could throw in some blues or something in between the clusters to provide a nice hue to the 'not-so-full-of-coral' spots.

sorry but that is just bad information. Don't just start throwing colors in all willy nilly. Clustering does not spotlight, but blends the colors together so you don't get the disco, or see the banding of seperate colors. I feel like I keep saying this over and over. Doing clusters still gives you coverage....look at the radion or Vega for instance, or the razor. If you want to do the rows of LEDs go for it, there are many members on here who seem to think it works for them. I personally disagree with doing rows. When adding colors you want to space those evenly in the clusters or if you choose rows. You don't want a blue here,red there sort of thing.

 

[Reefer Sutherland]

Yea, I have no experience, just brainstorming for a cool tank, I think it would be neat to have a couple pillars spotlighted and the rest of the tank kinda creepy and dark and spooky.

 

[NorthSide Reef]

sorry but that is just bad information. Don't just start throwing colors in all willy nilly. Clustering does not spotlight, but blends the colors together so you don't get the disco, or see the banding of seperate colors. I feel like I keep saying this over and over. Doing clusters still gives you coverage....look at the radion or Vega for instance, or the razor. If you want to do the rows of LEDs go for it, there are many members on here who seem to think it works for them. I personally disagree with doing rows. When adding colors you want to space those evenly in the clusters or if you choose rows. You don't want a blue here,red there sort of thing.

Here is a fixture with rows, and a red here and a green there. I see no discoing in the picture or in the tank.

 

[David Grigor]

I have Radions and perhaps it's the old saying the grass is always greener but I don't like the puck style arrays for my tank. If creates more shadowing ( which may not be an issue for the above tank with more stadium style seating ). For mine I'm thinking linear over the whole tank would better solve. Especially for Acropora dominate, when colonies get larger the branchings shadow each other the more points of overlapping light would be better.

 

[mapierce7]

Aesthetically speaking, clusters are better for blending as it was stated. For health and growth of your coral I don't think its that big of a deal. All that being said, if I were to build another DIY LED it would be with the 8 inch"T" slot heatsink from heatsinkusa.com so I could create clusters of lights. My thoughts are that if your heatsink is already drilled/tapped for linear rows of lights I would just roll with it so you can play around with your colors and get it tweaked into how you like it, can always thermal epoxy them into clusters down the road when you are satisfied with what you have. I have also played with diffuser films to help blend my linear array even better and have been quite satisfied with the results.

 

[Nanofreak79]

Here is a fixture with rows, and a red here and a green there. I see no discoing in the picture or in the tank.

Who's tank is that? Its a far away shot, and in pictures its hard to pick up from distance. To each there own. I think most everyone in the club is behind in the led movement, or advances. I've been using them since I started in my biocube,and many others. To the OP do some more research of you don't know exactly what to do. There is plenty of information coming from other sources to support this as well as many other issues with leds. The DIY guys are the ones who basically started the full spectrum movement, and had the commercial fixtures following, same with clusters etc.

 

[mapierce7]

I think most everyone in the club is behind in the led movement, or advances..

I slightly resent this comment, I know personally I keep a pretty close eye to the LED movement/market and have been exclusively LED lit for almost a year. Not saying that comment was directed toward any one individual.

 

[Nanofreak79]

I have Radions and perhaps it's the old saying the grass is always greener but I don't like the puck style arrays for my tank. If creates more shadowing ( which may not be an issue for the above tank with more stadium style seating ). For mine I'm thinking linear over the whole tank would better solve. Especially for Acropora dominate, when colonies get larger the branchings shadow each other the more points of overlapping light would be better.

How is it creating more shadowing? I've seen 4 tanks with them and have never noticed that, unless your talking about not using enough units. Are you using a canopy? Do you have the new lenses? Try hanging them higher, maybe there too close to the water.

 

[Nanofreak79]

I slightly resent this comment, I know personally I keep a pretty close eye to the LED movement/market and have been exclusively LED lit for almost a year.

I said most, and thick skin required. Its OK to have a discussion about something. Everyone seems to take thing to heart and way too personally.

 

[NorthSide Reef]

Who's tank is that? Its a far away shot, and in pictures its hard to pick up from distance. To each there own..

mine, I am standing far enough away so it is in the entire shot. It is cloudy because I just planted that macro and it was pretty messy but again the color blends just fine

here is a close up:

 

[Nanofreak79]

mine, I am standing far enough away so it is in the entire shot. It is cloudy because I just planted that macro and it was pretty messy but again the color blends just fine

here is a close up:

What light is it? I see its pretty focused in the middle, or more intense.

 

[NorthSide Reef]

it's the Rapid LED Onyx. It is bright in the center because the rock is bright white and is very tall in the center so it is reflecting a lot of the light. that is dimming now with the rock slowly changing color. Kind of bummed about that but a lot of die off with some of those plants is giving my some diatom problems that is changing the color to orange the culupra is doing well and growing fast so I hope it starts to balance soon.

But my point is looking at the sand and the color of the tank the LEDs are blending very well into a nice 18K color. Rapid used some very nice quality LEDs and I think that's as important as anything when it comes to the colors blending. This fixture is not controllable though. I am putting these exact fixtures over the 280 but those ones will be controllable on three channels White, Blue, and UV, Red, Green, together on the the third.

 

[Nanofreak79]

Very cool, I'll have to check out those fixtures. They must use fairly wide optics?

Edit..just looked at fixture, and see nice wide optics on colors and 80° on the others, both will help blend when hanging higher. I'd be nervous on no dimming, especially using crees....very reasonably priced fixture. To OP sorry if got off topic.

 

[NorthSide Reef]

these are 80's they also come with 60's $320 for the controllable ones $280 for the none Rapid. The controllable ones won't be out for 6 weeks I have four of them preordered

 

[David Grigor]

How is it creating more shadowing? I've seen 4 tanks with them and have never noticed that, unless your talking about not using enough units. Are you using a canopy? Do you have the new lenses? Try hanging them higher, maybe there too close to the water.

6 Radion Units on a 180g with TIR lenses and still shadowing an issue. 8" above, can't go ,uch if any higher because of ceiling height. Any acros that are more forward or back from the lights get light primarily from only 1 direction. As the acroporas grow, the branches block the light from lower branches and toda, shadows and corals die of or brown out in those areas making it difficult to product large show sized colonies without the bottom half dead skeleton. Now to solve some of those issues, having more uniform points of light evenly across the entire surface would eliminate. With MH it's a single source light but you have this huge refelector over the bulb and thus the light can not only spread further but bouncing at different angles. Where the LED puck it's just an inverted V type output. Just like using a flashlight and finger shadow puppets on a wall, anything get in the way and will cause a shadow.

For non-acropora dominate tanks or those that have mostly low lying corals and flatter aquascape it's less of an issue for the tank but still doesn't solve mature colonies issue.

In the frag/sump, I have 2 Razors which are also array/puck style. Not any issues because corals aren't mean't to ever become colonies and there is no aquascape to overcome.

 

[wardda]

Thanks for all the great insight, the heatsink is a heatsink usa one, but I ordered it about a week before they announced the T slot one :-( It isn't tapped I'm just going to use the stevesleds one part epoxy and see how that works out. So I can easily go with linear or cluster. Honestly I am happy with the lighting I get with my linear design right now and I'm using a DIY controller which dims very well in 1% increments, so I have flexibility with each channel. It is just if I have a lot of surface turbulence it becomes a disco or extreme shimmer which I don't like.

I'll play around with a few layouts and post those to get people's feedback. The nice thing about DIY is that you can change things if you don't like them, but I like getting feedback because changing things takes a long time when you are moving around all these leds.

 

[Nanofreak79]

6 Radion Units on a 180g with TIR lenses and still shadowing an issue. 8" above, can't go ,uch if any higher because of ceiling height. Any acros that are more forward or back from the lights get light primarily from only 1 direction. As the acroporas grow, the branches block the light from lower branches and toda, shadows and corals die of or brown out in those areas making it difficult to product large show sized colonies without the bottom half dead skeleton. Now to solve some of those issues, having more uniform points of light evenly across the entire surface would eliminate. With MH it's a single source light but you have this huge refelector over the bulb and thus the light can not only spread further but bouncing at different angles. Where the LED puck it's just an inverted V type output. Just like using a flashlight and finger shadow puppets on a wall, anything get in the way and will cause a shadow.

For non-acropora dominate tanks or those that have mostly low lying corals and flatter aquascape it's less of an issue for the tank but still doesn't solve mature colonies issue.

In the frag/sump, I have 2 Razors which are also array/puck style. Not any issues because corals aren't mean't to ever become colonies and there is no aquascape to overcome.

Only six radions? lol:fistcash: I understand about the lighting as far as T5 and metal halide giving a more broad spread,or pattern. I'll get to see your tank soon, can't wait.

 

[Nanofreak79]

Thanks for all the great insight, the heatsink is a heatsink usa one, but I ordered it about a week before they announced the T slot one :-( It isn't tapped I'm just going to use the stevesleds one part epoxy and see how that works out. So I can easily go with linear or cluster. Honestly I am happy with the lighting I get with my linear design right now and I'm using a DIY controller which dims very well in 1% increments, so I have flexibility with each channel. It is just if I have a lot of surface turbulence it becomes a disco or extreme shimmer which I don't like.

I'll play around with a few layouts and post those to get people's feedback. The nice thing about DIY is that you can change things if you don't like them, but I like getting feedback because changing things takes a long time when you are moving around all these leds.

In the end go with what works for you. Some of my ideas thoughts are personal preference, but also improvements that have been proven in the hobby IMO.