Tek Light conversion to LED Build (1 Viewer)

[adahm]

My T5 bulbs were coming up for replacement and was thinking about converting to LED. Thanks to fishcaze posting his conversion I got in touch with Mike known on this forum as as thereefranch and did the conversion on Saturday afternoon and fishined it this morning.

My Tek light was a 4 bulb hydroponics version with one cord and two switches. We converted to 60 LEDs, 5 drivers, with a Boost LED controller. This goes on a 90gal tank.

Here are some pictures of the build.

 

[adahm]

More Pics

Some more pictures

 

[Otto2005]

Nice are those Cree led's? I've converted a coralife mini t5 unit into led and have been wanting to convert my nova extreme t5 into led's with the boostled arduino controller. How do you like the boostled controller?

 

[adahm]

The LEDs are Cree from rapidled.com. I was going to hook them to my apex, but decided in the end to go with the boost. It is pretty easy to configure. It does require drivers that accept a PWM signal. I went ith the meanwell 60-48P drivers. they will dim down to around 10% then turn off. I am running 12 lights per driver.

 

[Otto2005]

What color Led's did you go with. I was thinking about using the same as AI sol's leds (Cool White, Blue, and Royal Blue).

 

[flexrac]

(otto) That color combo will give you what's called ocean white aka 14k, you may want some red,turquoise and true violet in the mix. i personally don't see the need for blue anymore, i prefer the two color temps of RB more. i.e cool white and neutral white. 5k and 6500k plus. because i use bridgelux with cree, i used 10k and 6500k for my whites.

Nice build Adahm!

 

[inigomontoya]

I think the concept of retrofitting these into existing fixtures is a great idea. Looks really clean-good job.

 

[adahm]

Colors are CW:RB 1:3 for every Cool White there are three Royal Blue, that makes 48 and the last string of 12 has 4 greens, 4 deep reds, 2 blue and 2 amber straight down the middle

I may change the colors a bit, I am running that channel at 20% right now and I do see the distinct amber and red colors shimmering. Corals do have more of a pop with colors on.

 

[adahm]

Mike did a very clean job with great attention to detail and a great guy to work with to boot. The best thing is that he's got the hardware and tools at his shop that helps greatly in bringing the retrofit together.

Although he can build custom pendants of aluminum and carbon fiber, I elected to go with the retrofit because I like the look of the TEK on legs.

The boost controller is sitting naked right now just pasted to one of the legs, but we'll be putting it into a custom box, mounted at the same location.