Linear vs Cluster LED Layout? (1 Viewer)

[David Grigor]

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.

Precisely, once your get X amount invested, you have to just live with the limitations and adapt your tank accordingly. I keep the acros little more manicured than I would otherwise like to, good news is that equals more frags.

No light is ever going to be perfect regardless what you choose. If there was a perfect light we all would be using it.......

Like I said, It may just be the grass is always greener saying. Linear with just 3-4 rows in the center wouldn't solve but if you had linear evenly spaced the entire length ( or near ) and width, I'm sure those issues would go away since so many points and light at many different angles. But I'm not going to ditch the Radions at pennies on the dollar ( since they are gen 1 ) to find out.

Fluffy/wavy stuff, low lying stuff ( zoanthids, chalices, acans etc ) now really an issue etc. other than what shadowing the rockwork itself causes. Hard branching is more of a challenge especially trying to acheive show sized colonies.

 

[Neil]

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:

Sick macro tank, are you making a build thread for it? I have always loved macro tanks. Looks like the leds blend colors very nicely. Did you put more reds in the fixture for the macro?

 

[NorthSide Reef]

I added (not on in the picture) a Kessil A150W 6500K for the macro. Very ugly color on its own but I figure I will have it on for a "high noon" type supplement for a few hours when I am at work . Also the Gracilaria and Padina shown in the picture did not survive. I think possibly the tank was too new.

 

[NickMan]

Steve's LED epoxy works great and gives you the option of removing the stars if you need too. You'll likely ruin it in the process but at least its not permanent!
I personally went with a loose cluster design (loose meaning the LEDs are about 1/4" to 3/4" apart and arranged in a circular array. There are Neutral White, Royal Blue, Violet, OCW 3UP chips with Blue, Red and Green chips. The NW an RB are dimmable and the rest are driven at 700 mA I have two of these over my 120 and will build another one when I eventually move to a 180. I dont have any optics on it yet so the colors all blend very well with hardly any noticeable shadowing.

 

[wardda]

Steve's LED epoxy works great and gives you the option of removing the stars if you need too. You'll likely ruin it in the process but at least its not permanent!
I personally went with a loose cluster design (loose meaning the LEDs are about 1/4" to 3/4" apart and arranged in a circular array. There are Neutral White, Royal Blue, Violet, OCW 3UP chips with Blue, Red and Green chips. The NW an RB are dimmable and the rest are driven at 700 mA I have two of these over my 120 and will build another one when I eventually move to a 180. I dont have any optics on it yet so the colors all blend very well with hardly any noticeable shadowing.

So how many LED's are you running total over your 120 and are your whites XPG or the XML?

Thanks

 

[Nanofreak79]

Steve's LED epoxy works great and gives you the option of removing the stars if you need too. You'll likely ruin it in the process but at least its not permanent!
I personally went with a loose cluster design (loose meaning the LEDs are about 1/4" to 3/4" apart and arranged in a circular array. There are Neutral White, Royal Blue, Violet, OCW 3UP chips with Blue, Red and Green chips. The NW an RB are dimmable and the rest are driven at 700 mA I have two of these over my 120 and will build another one when I eventually move to a 180. I dont have any optics on it yet so the colors all blend very well with hardly any noticeable shadowing.

This is exactly what I would do, and what I think works best. Put some pics up for people to see. Sounds like you have a nice solid fixture as far as color/arrangement.

 

[NickMan]

hope that works....

I have two of these over the 120
The LEDS are:
20 x RB @ 1100mA max but peak at about 75% of that
8 x NW (XPG) @ 1100mA but peak at about 75% of that
6 x True Violet @ 700mA
4 x OCW 3 UPs @ 700mA

14 RB are on one dimmable channel and 8 NW and 6 RB run on the other dimmable channel.

In the future I may add a couple more NW or even a warm white to help drop the overall kelvin rating a bit since I think I still have room on one of the drivers, Ill have to check my math on that again.

You could actually group them much closer than I did but I wanted to make sure I had good spread and the wiring would have been an even bigger pain in the butt.

 

[Nanofreak79]

Looks very nice! I love the color combo, I'd do much the same as far as quantity and layout. The grouping looks pretty good, you could of made it tighter but looks fine.....wiring tight groups like that is a PITA! Nice job, I bet your tank looks real nice under those.

 

[NickMan]

Thanks Nano, the tank does look better than I had hoped and WAY better than tanks Ive seen with only 2 or 3 colors of LEDs over them. My flame hawkfish is the brightest he's ever been in 6 years and that was under halides.

As for the grouping, if I had noticed bad "disco effect" after I built the first one Id have prob grouped the second unit closer. I am a little worried that if I ever add the 90 degree optics it will be noticeable but until then I'm very happy with it. Now if it can last me another 5-10 years I'll be even happier. Maybe I can roll around in a small pile of $1 bills I saved by building these. lol

 

[Nanofreak79]

I think with a grouping that tight 80° optics would be fine. You should be fine without optics at 24", anything past that I would add them. Maybe borrow the par meter from SWE for a better idea of output, even though its not super accurate for measuring LEDs

 

[NickMan]

Ive been meaning to get some numbers from my light. Ill have to look into that.

 

[Nanofreak79]

Just wanted to update that I never use optics on the exotic CB,R and turgoise/cyan clusters or stars.