Afew of my theories/ideas:
*The benefit of DIY over manufactured fixtures to me is that you can get better more even coverage of the tank. The heat sink/fixture can be tailored to match the footprint of the tank, minus only a little bit from the edges. This way you are not relying on the light spread of a fixture(s) to overlap between fixtures or make it out to the ends, like when you light a 6' tank with 3 individual reflectors. My tanks have led's end to end, front to back, 2" apart, except for the 3" spaces I left directly over the 2 crossbraces. This being said, to get this benefit, forget about watts per gallon and all that, go for complete coverage, it will be capable of being far brighter than you need, but you can adjust it down.
*Even with a 2:1 blue to white ratio, I still run my whites signifigantly dimmer than blues in the daytime for a 14k-20k look. With both set the same, it looks very 10k like(almost yellow), so I would definitely reccomend the 2:1 ratio for greatest flexibility. This being said, in order to get the whites evenly distributed, the best layout I have found is to stgger the rows by half the distance of seperation. You can see this in the templates I made in my first post. If you don't do this, you kind of end up with diagonal lines of whites.
xb b W b b W b b W b b W b b W b b W
b W b b W b b W b b W b b W b b W b
xb b W b b W b b W b b W b b W b b W
Notice how the whites end up laying out in a diamond format above.
b b W b b W b b W b b W b b W b b W
b W b b W b b W b b W b b W b b W b
W b b W b b W b b W b b W b b W b b
If you line the rows up, and alternate the order, you end up with whites and blues in diagonal lines, if you do a 5:3 ratio, it becomes very sporadic.
* The drivers are only $30 each. Instead of trying to save a couple bucks, figure out what will work best according to your layout(draw it out to on paper)
Example: if you have 32 whites and 16 blues for a total of 48 led's, yes, 2 drivers will light it all, but only if you split it in half, putting 8 whites on with the blues. Therefore, I would use 3 drivers. (2 )for whites with 16 on each, and (1) for the 16 blues, then they can be controlled independently.
* If you are wiring series-paralell to put more than 12-13 on each driver,(do your own homework on this), and you have multiple drivers, try to split the strings between both sides of the tank. This way if something fails, you don't go dark on just one side. For example, in my 4" tank, I have 2 drivers doing the blues, each driver does a string of 12 on one side, and a string of 12 on the other side, If I disconnect one driver, I still have the other driver covering the length of the tank, instead of losing one whole side.
* If your drivers and fan power supply are to be mounted under the tank, or anywhere other than attached to the fixture, use some Molex or other type of plugs at the fixture so you can disconnect and remove it easily for servicing.
I love it, how long did it take you to build? I was wondering, now that we know what "neighborhood" you are talking about. How long do you think it will take to recoup your costs? Between the bulbs you were buying, electricity, and the cost of cooling it? Very nice job with the wires. I would love to get something going for my tank. It gets old buying bulbs, and it kills me to throw out the old ones.
