I bought this TL550 from @boetie to use as a quarantine tank, or to put in my office
I rescaped it and put in some new PL tubes
I decided that the tank really wanted to have LEDs and I wanted to practice a build so that I could learn some tricks before attempting an upgrade on my big tank. So I bought a DIY kit from Aquastyle I also took the moonlight and 2xfan upgrades it cost USD206 including shipping (by post).Shipping heatsinks was too costly so I got a 60cm heatsink from Mantech and cut it in half (should probably have bought two 30cm ones) cost about R200 and delivered next day. I also bought one of the helping hands to assist with soldering (R124 well spent).
Had to gut the hood
To fit everything in
The controller allows you to set 4 channels of LEDs .You can daisy chain the driver boards on each channel and put seven 3w LEDs per board. The controller ramps up/down the power over 30 minutes. I am only using 3 of the channels with 2 drivers on one channel. The intent was to a create warm morning (2 blue, 2 pink, 2cyan, 1 white), hot midday (7 blue, 7 white) and sunset ( 2 blue, 2 pink, 1cyan, 2 white). The morning is too warm, I will replace 1 cyan and one pink with blues sometime)
Just after installing the hood. Set to midday only. The corals were still asleep from having no light all day.
Sunset channel
I rescaped it and put in some new PL tubes
I decided that the tank really wanted to have LEDs and I wanted to practice a build so that I could learn some tricks before attempting an upgrade on my big tank. So I bought a DIY kit from Aquastyle I also took the moonlight and 2xfan upgrades it cost USD206 including shipping (by post).Shipping heatsinks was too costly so I got a 60cm heatsink from Mantech and cut it in half (should probably have bought two 30cm ones) cost about R200 and delivered next day. I also bought one of the helping hands to assist with soldering (R124 well spent).
Had to gut the hood
To fit everything in
The controller allows you to set 4 channels of LEDs .You can daisy chain the driver boards on each channel and put seven 3w LEDs per board. The controller ramps up/down the power over 30 minutes. I am only using 3 of the channels with 2 drivers on one channel. The intent was to a create warm morning (2 blue, 2 pink, 2cyan, 1 white), hot midday (7 blue, 7 white) and sunset ( 2 blue, 2 pink, 1cyan, 2 white). The morning is too warm, I will replace 1 cyan and one pink with blues sometime)
Just after installing the hood. Set to midday only. The corals were still asleep from having no light all day.
Sunset channel
Last edited by a moderator:
