Just finished the lights for the Aquarium (30/07/17). So happy to have gotten rid of the cheap blueish looking LED strips from the previous picture.

Everything including the fish look so much more vibrant and natural now with this Light.

First a little bit of tech talk on these amazing LED’s. As mentioned before its the Samsung LT-H282D 4000K Strips.

• 282mm long, 18mm wide PCB with 3×8 LED groups on it
• Operating voltage is 24V
• Max Current is 600mA
• Lumens per Watt is in the Range of 169-190Lm/W which is absolutely crazy when you compare this to almost any other LED on the market. The closer to max current you go the less light efficient they go. For the Aquarium due to Driver selection I will only be running them at max 350mA per Strip which means I will be roughly at around 180Lm/W.
• Max Wattage per Strip @600mA is around 14W
• Max Lumen per Strip at @600mA is around 2300Lm

I chose the Meanwell HLG-80H-C700B (84-129V and max 700mA) as it was closest to suit my needs. 2 Parallel Groups of 4 Strips in Series.

Using Ohms Law this gives 350mA per Strip and a Voltage of 96V needed from the Driver (For those who dont know how I got this, google Ohms Law, 700mA is split by the 2 parallel groups, each group gets equal so 350mA, each strip in series therefore gets 350mA (which is about 58% of the max 600mA) Voltage is 24V per Strip by number of Strip in series which is 4 so 24×4=96V)

The 8 Strips @350mA/each will give out around 12100Lm minimum (Wattage W=8x24x0.350=67W, from Datasheet around 180Lm/W therefore Lm=67×180=12100Lm) This seemed to have been a bit much for the Siamese Algea Eaters. They didnt seem to like the high light levels for some reason and have gone very hidy so for now I have it dimmed down to about 70%. I dont need a certain light level for growing plants inside the aquarium anyway. Long in short I could have probably used less Strips but at least it gives great coverage and I can still up the lighting if needed later on.

Here some pictures of the Aquarium from a few days ago. Its still very brownish from the roots I guess it will take time. I have some carbon in a mediareactor that should take care of the tannins but its a lot of Wood! I have added an extremely handy blackout blind to the front of the shelf. It makes it so much more enjoyable to look into the aquarium as you dont get blinded by the LEDs. It also massively increases the light coverage for the plants up above in the growbeds due to reflection of the white material.

The Build was fairly straight forward and there is plenty others that have done a great job at explaining all the details. (Checkout this link, great LED Blog!)

Got some Aluminium Profile cut to size to mount the strips and also to act as a passive heatsinks. No active cooling needed due to the size of the Aluminium and the fact that I am only running the LED at max 50% so they are not running very hot.

Thermal Plaster (Glue) was added to the back of the Strips to glue them to the Aluminium and also to make sure the heat is transferred very efficiently away from the LED’s.

I also used screws on the first few but not later on as I dont think its needed and all my drill bits broke 😉

I wired each light individually so I can later-on potentially change the arrangement electrically but I wont do this for the other lights as its unnecessarily messy and I am very happy with the LED’s now that I have seen their potential that I am confident in my other light plans.

This is them in action. Also the plumbing in the back is now finished and up and running 🙂 Doesnt look too bright on the picture/camerasettings but believe me these things are like an indoor SUN and you absolutely cannot look directly into them!

So relieved that the color temperature of 4000K is looking so nice and natural and very much like sunlight. It always a bit of a gamble but I am very happy with it the fish also look very vibrant. Will hopefully gets some better pictures soon (with cleaned glass and all, hekherrrmm 😉