Ace's ATS v2.0 - LEDs

[rygh]

Dimming is a good idea.
Not only do they last longer, but they are more efficient as far as lumens/watt.
And yes, that is a good way to spread out the light.
Of course, you pay more. Dollars per lumen goes up.

As far as my LED system, I am still quite happy with it.
Well, except that recently it switched to a tougher algae. I thought it might be bryopsis,
but looking more, I think it is just a mix of turf.
I don't get a ton of algae, but that is because I don't feed much either.
At one cube a day, plus a few flakes, you can hardly expect pounds of algae every week.

[SantaMonica]

I was talking only in terms of algae, not electronics.

[jnad]

If you want to put the LEDs closer than 3" I would put more LEDs per side to make up for the coverage and run the current at 500mA or less on the LEDs. Since your talking about a nano scrubber you still shouldn't need more than 6 per side. I just looked at your nano scrubber, single sided, so ya, 5 or 6 LEDs at 1" distance on your scrubber would be my recommendation and run them at 400-500mA, which means you would want to get a dimmable driver like a Buckpuck that handles up to 6 3w LEDs.

Driver - http://www.ledsupply.com/03021-d-e-700.php
Power Supply - http://www.ledsupply.com/12vdc25a.php

Or get a bigger driver and it has a built in power supply
meanwell driver - http://www.rapidled.com/servlet/the-41/ ... ble/Detail
knobs to dim it - http://www.rapidled.com/servlet/the-116 ... ter/Detail

Hello!

Thanks for your time looking in to my question, and scrubber setup.

I am setting up a new nano reef this fall, this nano reef will be about 120-200 liters of water. I am going to build a new scrubber for this nano reef and thinking i will use leds in this scrubber, thats why i asked about the distanse between leds and screen.

When it comes to my current scrubber setup for my 63 liter nano reef i am just about finished with a new nano scrubber for this tank. This scrubber is lightned with a 1xPL-24W bulb and eksternal driver, I will post a building tread for this new scrubber this week.
Here is a link to the bulb i am using:
http://download.p4c.philips.com/l4bt...37_ffs_nor.pdf

jnad

[Ace25]

Quick update showing how it is working today.. This is a 5 day cleaning, I cleaned it on Sunday and it is now Friday and this is what it looks like before I cleaned it. Pictures of the screen don't show how it truely looks in person unfortunately. It was very thick (3D type growth) and very heavy holding the screen. I see more growth with 6 reds + 1 blue than I was getting with just 4 reds. Not sure how much the blue helped though since I made 2 changes at once. I will say one thing, I get less growth since I took off a big fan I had over the screen. Now I just have 2 computer fans cooling the LEDs. So in my opinion, there is some limiting factor with algae growth that is overcome by adding a lot of airflow over the screen, although the downside to that is lots of evaporation and your heaters running a lot more, running up the power bill. I decided the extra cost in power wasn't worth the extra growth.

[SantaMonica]

Best LED growth yet

[SPOTTER]

can you show me what you used to mount the heat sinks? it looks like they are on some kind of bracket that allows you to tilt them.

[Ace25]

I just used standard 2"x1" C channel aluminum. I put some stick on rubber feed on the bottom ones to be able to tilt them and have them stay. The top one I just riveted a small piece of aluminum wrapped in electrical tape.. cheesy I know.. but it works.

[kerry]

Mine looks just like that but I used material about 1/2 that width.

[Aquayne]

It is likely that the increased airflow was providing more CO2.

[wgood33]

Ace your scrubber design is awesome. I too will be radically modifying my ATS setup and wanted to ask you a question. I believe our screens need to be tougher in order to last longer. My 1st ATS used 2 of the typical screens sandwiched together with wire ties. After about 10 months the algae grew in between the 2 screen making the unit too thick for the slot. So I removed 1 screen and went to a single screen which is now torn in a few places. We need tougher screens, thinking of building one out of thin acrylic. I actually preferred the sandwiched method because you could get aggressive on the pruning and there would be existing algae in between the screens to easily grow back. Comments? Bill