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Inherited 90
- Thread starter redfishbluefish
- Start date
mrehfeld
Officer Emeritus
Led light woes
This has not been a good time for me with lights. As I've explained HERE, I had to rebuild my Apollo LEDs, where one is done and hanging in the tank, and the second is awaiting the LED beads coming on a slow boat from China. In the mean time I have been using an old TauTronics LED....one of the original China imports. Well the blue LEDs on the TauTronics decided not to fire up today, so I'm again without one light....or really, half a light, because the whites work just fine.
So what I've done is to use the two ATI Blue Plus T5's in place of the blue LED's....which I installed about a month ago or so...and the white channel on the TauTronics. I'm hoping that holds me over while I await delivery of one of those $78 165W Dimmable Full Spectrum LED Reef Aquarium Light that I just ordered off of eBay.
With the TauTronics, I'm guessing that the power supply (DC driver) went out. If anyone knows were I could pick up a replacement DC driver, I'd appreciate it......and not something like a Meanwell, but a similar small driver that came with this unit that will drive 25 three watt LEDs at about 2 watts. I don't even know if these drivers are constant current or constant voltage! No labels!!!!
This has not been a good time for me with lights. As I've explained HERE, I had to rebuild my Apollo LEDs, where one is done and hanging in the tank, and the second is awaiting the LED beads coming on a slow boat from China. In the mean time I have been using an old TauTronics LED....one of the original China imports. Well the blue LEDs on the TauTronics decided not to fire up today, so I'm again without one light....or really, half a light, because the whites work just fine.
So what I've done is to use the two ATI Blue Plus T5's in place of the blue LED's....which I installed about a month ago or so...and the white channel on the TauTronics. I'm hoping that holds me over while I await delivery of one of those $78 165W Dimmable Full Spectrum LED Reef Aquarium Light that I just ordered off of eBay.
With the TauTronics, I'm guessing that the power supply (DC driver) went out. If anyone knows were I could pick up a replacement DC driver, I'd appreciate it......and not something like a Meanwell, but a similar small driver that came with this unit that will drive 25 three watt LEDs at about 2 watts. I don't even know if these drivers are constant current or constant voltage! No labels!!!!
Hockeynut
NJRC Member
Paul I tried to get Teo Tronics to send me a driver I was willing to pay and still I had lots of problems, run around with some girl receptionist on the phone than another guy on the e mail and in the end I got nowhere. Good luck you will need it
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Rob, what I don't get is that this driver has the same appearance in the TauTronics, Apollo and Reefbreeder fixtures I have (and nothing with a label.) You would think they'd be a dime-a-dozen on ebay or amazon, or somewhere, but I can't find a-one.
This is the reason I gave up trying to fix my old "Chinese" led fixture. Was nearly impossible to find out what driver I needed, the only label on the blown driver was a small white sticker with a few Chinese symbols on it. I looked for a while and talked to quite a few people with no luck. I still have this fixture but cannot remember which channel went out (it was probably 2 years ago). If you're interested I can check and let you know. You can have it for the driver of it will work and possibly extra parts for a back up.
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The specs look perfect. How do the connections compare?
I think the link above is a driver that you can dim. I have no dimmers on mine. I think THIS ONE is the closest I've found so far....although mA is a touch high.
600ma is fine with your new fans and proper heatsink contact.
I don't know how they do it!
I ordered an eBay "Chinese" LED fixture that arrived today. I'm impressed! It's sold as 165 W, but that is the mathimatical sum of 55 LEDs that are rated at 3 W each. Actually they are run at about 2 W, for about 120 W total. HERE is the eBay link.
This was very well packaged with foam material to protect the fixture:
FYI, It shipped from California in that box.
And here is the light turned on at the lowest settings......full spectrum. If turned up, I can't take a picture....it's too bright.
Tomorrow I'll make aluminum angle brackets and add this to the two Apollo's I have, for a total of three 120 W fixtures.
Again, I paid about the same amount to fix the first Apollo.....I don't know how they do this for $78 with free shipping. But time will tell!
I ordered an eBay "Chinese" LED fixture that arrived today. I'm impressed! It's sold as 165 W, but that is the mathimatical sum of 55 LEDs that are rated at 3 W each. Actually they are run at about 2 W, for about 120 W total. HERE is the eBay link.
This was very well packaged with foam material to protect the fixture:
FYI, It shipped from California in that box.
And here is the light turned on at the lowest settings......full spectrum. If turned up, I can't take a picture....it's too bright.
Tomorrow I'll make aluminum angle brackets and add this to the two Apollo's I have, for a total of three 120 W fixtures.
Again, I paid about the same amount to fix the first Apollo.....I don't know how they do this for $78 with free shipping. But time will tell!
Built the rack to hold the lights and installed all three fixtures. The new Chinese guy is in the middle, and you can clearly see it has lenses. Here they are with blues only.
It's not real clear in the following full tank shot, but the lenses cause for a brighter center section of the tank.
The plug of the fan in the side of the canopy was plugged into the same gang as the "whites" circuit to help dissipate heat when all LED's are lit.
I'm happy.
It's not real clear in the following full tank shot, but the lenses cause for a brighter center section of the tank.
The plug of the fan in the side of the canopy was plugged into the same gang as the "whites" circuit to help dissipate heat when all LED's are lit.
I'm happy.
The old rack was simply inexpensive fir strips from HD:
The issue with this rack is that it drooped from the weight of the two fixtures and I had to add a brace in the middle. I didn't realize this until I add the T5's and the droop was too great for me to install four foot bulbs.....had to straighten it out.
The new rack had to lose that center brace since the one fixture was right in the middle of the rack. I used the same fir strip material, but first ripped it and glued and screwed to make an L bracket. This adds tremendous strength to the five foot length, now easily handling the weight of three fixtures, with no droop.
And the T5's are now gone.
The issue with this rack is that it drooped from the weight of the two fixtures and I had to add a brace in the middle. I didn't realize this until I add the T5's and the droop was too great for me to install four foot bulbs.....had to straighten it out.
The new rack had to lose that center brace since the one fixture was right in the middle of the rack. I used the same fir strip material, but first ripped it and glued and screwed to make an L bracket. This adds tremendous strength to the five foot length, now easily handling the weight of three fixtures, with no droop.
And the T5's are now gone.
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With the addition of this third fixture to my canopy, I now have an issue with all the cords. Each fixture has two cords, one for blues and one for whites, while one fixture has a third wire for moon lights. In addition I have two old IceCap moonlight fixtures with two more cords/wall warts. The mess where all the wires meet is starting to look like that garage outlet on Christmas Vacation.
There's a total of nine cords! What can I do to organize this and make it look a little prettier? If you have pictures, that would be appreciated.
For comparison, here's the outlet from Christmas Vacation
There's a total of nine cords! What can I do to organize this and make it look a little prettier? If you have pictures, that would be appreciated.
For comparison, here's the outlet from Christmas Vacation
Paul, have you thought about those DJ strips that a lot of people use? Thats might be a good way to clean it all up.