retrofitting aqualight pro fixture with leds???

What size is the fixture?
96 watts would be roughly equivalent to a 36 LED fixture. However, most people don't run LED's at full power all the time, so assuming you are going to be dimming and/or not running the whites all the time, I'd say you're looking at 48 LED's for a rough equivalent (this is just a guess).
Slovan recently did something similar and retrofitted 2 AI Sol Units (24 LED each) into a fixture. He might be able to give some insight into what he did.
Here is his thread: http://www.greateriowareefsociety.org/Community/DiscussionForums/tabid/78/aft/23057/Default.aspx
-JB

 

JB, I think Su's talking about only replacing the PC's with LEDs and keeping the halides. I replaced my actinic VHO bulbs for my 6' tank with 14 royal blue LEDs, I think it was plenty for supplementing my halides. I would recommend Meanwell drivers, each one of them handles a max of 14 LEDs in series, so I'd either go with 14 on one driver or 28 on two drivers, it all completely depends on size of your tank and how much supplementing you'd like to do.

 

Yeah, definitely 80 degree or no optics if it just for looks.

I think if you put 14 XP-E's on one of those drivers, you would be pushing it to it's absolute limit. This is the reason I decided to go with 12 over 14.

I have no idea if the aluminum in the fixture would be enough of a heat sink, but it might work since you're going with the 35-700 drivers. The lower current should help with the heat a bit.

-JB

 

Yea I would think 12 LEDs over a 4' tank would be plenty for supplementing. I have 14 over my 6' tank and it's pretty darn blue.

I would still get a heatsink to attach the LEDs to, you'll see a lot more life out of them if you do. There's plenty of thin heatsinks out there, here's a link to RapidLED's heatsink page:
http://www.rapidled.com/servlet/the-Heat-Sinks/Categories

Good luck and take plenty of pictures!

 

Do you mean XR-E vs XP-E?

I believe the XP-E are newer which probably means they are more efficient and have a higher light output per watt.

 

From what I've read, hey're pretty much the same amount of light, but the XP-E's have a wider angle spread(without optic) and the XR-E's have a narrower angle(without optic). XP-E's have a bigger diode than the XR-E's, but when they're on the starboards, they're the same size. The optics for the XR-E's are friction fit, the XP-E's need glued on. I don't really understand the bin system to categorize them, but what I understand, the higher the bin number, the brighter the light? If I am remembering correctly, XR-E's have a 110 degree light spread without any optics, not sure about XP-E's.

JB, any reason you chose XP-E's in your build instead of XR-E's?