NEED led advice

as for the drivers put all 14 blue on one 10 whites on the other and and how about meet in the middle and do 3 red 3 green 3 uv 3 cyan thats 12 on the last dim drivers that way if i find bleaching is occuring i pull 1 of each out and then have back ups incase some goes horribly wrong

then run rights between 50-55% blues at about 70-80% and colors 75-80% does this sound like a good idea?

 

The royal blues are run at 1500ma max, I do 1300ma max. the total layout would be this:
12 XT-E RB
4 XPE blue
12 XP-G CW
4 XP-E red (would prefer osram hyper red)
2-4 cyan
4 420nm violet
no greens if using cyan.
I had little time to type, so I summed it up. Only 24 crees for photosynthetic purpose, 40 LEDs total max. That is about enough for an sps reef in a shallow tank like that, if spread correctly. Overkill is underrated, you can always dim them, and will likely run the royals and CWs at 1000-1200ma after acclimation. And BTW, I do not like to use neutral whites. Reds, greens, and violets, as well as blues and cyans, have a much greater benefit than white LEDs with the red or green spikes in them.

 

You're close and def do as many lights as you can afford! But you'll have WAY more than enough with that. And don't pull the lights for backups, just adjust them down. I'm guessing you won't like the color of the tank with your %'s but thats whats great about LEDs, you can change that with your controller in about 20 seconds, I think, never used that one, but nonetheless, easily.

And don't forget to accilmate your corals to the new lights or they will bleach, I;d start off low and work up over a month

 

This dude knows more about LEDs than I ever will, so he's prob right about the whites. However, how is he gonna run his drivers? 16 blues on 1?

 

thats what im trying to figure out most drivers only support a max of 14
thats other problem trying to stay within a budget

 

No! Blues are 1000ma max, royals are 1500ma max. I either run the XTEs in parellel, or use a driver with a large voltage range, usually Chinese. I will find a good driver that you can buy in the usa. Meanwell eln 60s do not run well with 6 LEDs in parellel, or 12 5 watt LEDs, so the magic number is 9 per eln 60, and 4 per eln 30. You could run them low, or use less and run them high. Or I will find you a good driver Regular blues are considered colors, I usually put all colors together, no need to get too fancy, unless you are dead set on control.

 

And BTW, you can run 2 parrellel strings of 8, or remove 2 cyans (for 2 total). 14x 3= 42v. Run the string at 650ma for the violets and cyans. Violets are about 2v, so the total would actually be around 38v with 14 LEDs, or 44 with 16, perfectly within the eln 60s range

 

thank god my dad was an electric engineer in the air-force. im going into the medical field. so anything electricity goes over my head lol

 

WOW, I need to read up on currents, didn't know the RBs were up to 1500 max.

Whats your budget BTW?

 

trying to stay in the 250 rang like i said its going to be a while before i have this up and running