Led Lights For Artinics

Here are some links with what you will need.

http://www.rapidled.com/10v-ac-adapter/

http://www.rapidled.com/10k-ohm-linear-potentiometer/

http://www.rapidled.com/dc-power-connector/

If you need any help with soldering it up let me know i can always come out and assist. 

Price wise, I am sure its pretty much the sum total of the pieces with perhaps a nominal discount so I would not be overly swayed in terms of if you wanted to change it a bit and add some true violet type LEDs... just be careful if you choose to mix and match because if you use a single dimmer your max current is going to have to be set to the Max current of the lowest capable LED in the string and true violets are not capable of taking the current of the XP-E... so for what its worth, I would simply order as specified and go with it.  The 450 nm Royal Blue LED are going to do a TON for fluorescence as well as PAR over the tank, so be a little careful with the heat sink size and tank width you really would like them to cover most of the tank and use Lens options that make sense in terms of mount height and tank depth.  For the most part I would go with something in the 80 degree range and mount them 12 inches up if your at the water maybe no lens would be better but the LED dies put out a fair amount of light to the sides so your intensity will be better with lens on.  

Also, if your tank is big (over 36 inches say) you might get spotlighting where the light cones are independently visible- that actually can look really cool... but just a thought.

As for the driver, I personally would avoid a potentiometer cause your just going to have to build it and then plug the whole thing into some sort of timer.  Yes, cheap... but for a very little more you can purchase the PWM dimmer from ReefAngel for 90 bucks (I think).  It is a independent Arduino processor and power supply that will run the lights and can be fully programmed to do anything you want ( can help here) up to and including to model moon phase and run the lights according to the calculated sunrise and sunset times (or any variation on that, e.g. run the blues 2 hour or 4 hours or whatever after sunset or even to a set time of day).  The ONLY issue is that the PMW driver (they also sell a Analog driver for a few dollars more) requires USB power input to run the processor... 

I have asked the owner of ReefAngel if there is a way to easily mod or power this without having to use a USB supply... but I suspect that if you had a powered USB hub laying around you could simply plug the included USB cable into that and that into the wall... and away you go.  

Otherwise, Rapid does sell a somewhat programmable PMW dimmer controller- you can program in times etc but you could not modify their internal program.  With the ReefAngel- IF I can figure out how to do it... you would get what is probably the most powerful PMW dimming controller available for 90 bucks.  Its not going to have a display to tell you what its doing, but I have a very extensive and well tested (others around the world are using it) program that was literally into the hundreds of hours of development time and coding, and thats free!  

The other way to do this that is dirt simple, is to simply get a power supply that outputs 10 V and plug it into the dimmer of the D type and then adjust the internal pots on the MeanWell drivers to limit the current output (can also adjust voltage but you may not need to do so) to whatever intensity set point you want... then you do not need a potentiometer but it would be more painful to adjust the intensity were you ever wanting to do so cause you would need to then open the Meanwell driver, put your meter in line with the string and adjust the pot to change the output current.  But, if all you want is to set it and forget it I would just jump it to 10V on the input side and self limit the drive current to about 80% of the MAX drive current for the XPE and leave it alone running it off a timer on the wall.  

I sincerely hope that we can use the ReefAngel Dimmer controllers cause its amazing what you can do with them and that way, you would be able to add up to 5 more strings of LED and control them all from that one 90 dollar box...  just not certain yet if it will work without a powered USB hub which would add a little bit to the price.  

ALSO.... in terms of the voltage input I used (10V) I am pretty sure thats correct but I would need to look at it to be sure.  Just throwing out ideas.

You cannot simply plug in the controller to a USB power source- because it needs a RTC sync (to figure out what the time is)... were exploring work arounds to this.

WIll post back more later.

Take that for what its worth, i have read forums in which people are on both sides of the fence as for me i went with adding them to supplement color.

My set up for my 34G is

5 cool white

5 Neutral white

15 Royal Blue

2 UV

The other issue with adding UV lights from rapid LED is they are not CREE lights and if you do not tune the drivers down you can blow out the LED.