Calling all RapidLED DIYer's, need help on what to order

I am thinking of ordering led's from rapidled and would love it if someone could help me. I have a bowfront tank, 36" long, 16 1/2" wide and 20 3/4" deep. It is a reef tank with fish and corals, lps and sps, just a variety of everything in it. I got suckered into buying a Marineland reef capable led fixture a year or so ago when they came out...really bad idea! Most of the corals in the bottom of the tank died and the mushrooms and some gsp that were close to the top all bleached out and died. So, I switched back to my T5's a while ago and everything is doing better. Now, I know that the PAR is terrible on the Marineland light and it generally sucks all around so getting rid of that thing! I would like to try to make my own, but have no clue what to order for my size tank. Does anyone have experience with a bowfront and rapidled and know what to order? By the way, forgot to add that I like a balance of all colors, not too much of the blue or anything. I just want all the corals to grow better and really pop the colors. Thanks for any help you could give!

 

I have no exp with your size tank and leds. But I recently took some par reads off my tank that has a mix of leds and MH. These are rapid led builds. Under the 36 (24b 12w)led fixture at the surface of the water I had 800 par at 100 percent. At 50 percent which is where I run them I had 580 par. Lights are 16 inches above the water and tank is 24 inches deep. At 60 percent I was bleaching chalices on the bottom of the tank. I think that fixture would probably give you enough spread to cover your 36 inch wide tank. However it is pretty blue, the way I like it. I was told that reefkeepers on the west coast like their tanks more blue than those on the east coast. At the bottom directly under the leds was about 240 par. I can't really give you a good number on the edges because I have more lights that would affect the reads.
The strings of lights you build will basically be in multiples of 12. Although you could mix one string of blue and white you just couldn't run the whites at 100 percent without damaging the blues. But that shouldn't be an issue as I doubt you will run anything at 100 percent.
Not much help but maybe it will give you an idea of what you are looking at

Oh I think they are 80 degree lenses

 

300 micro mols over 30" square trays that are 10" deep

 

On the left is 24 rbs and 24 cw's running at 50% on the right is only cw's

For that tank I'd do a 36+ led system with 60-80 degree optics, 24(6 cyan, 6 blue, 12 rbs) then 12 whites(8 cw's, 4 nw's) and then add 8 violets/reds.

Ya can always tweak that a little more white, but watch the max current levels of Cree's as the vary and ya need to match those up with drivers.

 

Thanks for all of your help and info. I have been reading as many threads as possible about the diy leds on here and hopefully will be able to figure this out! It is very confusing though!

 

LOL, I thought so too, I watched a few videos, read a few threads, and read the instructions and still didn't get it. But once ya've done that, and then have the parts in front of you, its more just time consuming than hard. I'd get the plug and play kit though if ya don't want to solder. Makes it easier to swap out led's later if ya wanna change colors as well.

 

+1 on plug and play! Plus, Mike @ Rapid answered every mundane question I had quickly! He is great to deal with!

 

Also, listen to Cosmo and Evolved (if he responds to this thread) because their help was great as well! See Cosmo's posts about his Typhoon controller as well, good stuff

 

You have the 46 gallon bow right?

I like cosmo's idea of 36 LEDs. I believe rapid's 20" heat sink can hold 36. If you want to do more, you could always hang two of their 9" heat sinks side by side to get a nice spread. Once you decide on how many LEDs you want, we can start talking spectrum.

And try to figure out how high you want to hang the heat sink before ordering optics. Remember that the intensity of light from LEDs using optics is greatest in 50% of the angle. So in an 80 degree optic, the light is most intense at a 40 degree angle from the LED.

 

+1 I have a 36gal bow that is 21" deep. In using the hood I had already created for my power compacts, I went with the 80* optics as opposed to the 60*, for my blues and whites. I also used some UV LEDs which have no optics. This was all with the Plug and Play set.
You really need to read up on the controllers for these LEDs which will help with chosing the drivers for the LEDs. Cosmo really loves the dawn/dusk programing of the Typhoon and says it was relatively easy to do. The nice thing about the controllers are the ability to dim the LED's because at full power they put out some crazy light!
Also, be aware that the blues, whites and UV LEDs take different drivers to power them, pay attention to the output of the driver compared to what the max power is of the LEDs and how many LED's each driver will run.