The Ultimate DIY LED Project

I just did almost the same thing on my tank. I didn't do the acrylic work but used the red and green LEDs on each panel too. I also did something different withnmy whites and blues and I am very happy with them. I have three panels of 42 over my 220 using 6 different colors in each panel controlling them with my apex and very happy how it all worked out corals and fish seem to like them a lot.

 

I like your design, you've done your homework. I decided to harcoat anodize my fixtures to give them some long term protection from humidity and I went with natural convection for cooling versus using a fan. The fixtures run warm to the touch, but not hot, so I may loose a little efficiency. I have my ballasts mounted in a remote area. with a single chord running to the fixture. I added 1A fuses and 1 ohm resistors in series with each string of leds. The fuse will go before the LEDs in case of a power surge or accidental over adjustment when tuning the ballasts. The resistor gives a quick reference voltage equal to the current in the circuit, V=IR. I added a pic of my fixtue design in a photo album.
http://girs.s3.amazonaws.com/0/acti...xtures.png

 

I did series because I control each of my four main colors separately and go for just about any combo of look I want and that works best for the tank. I have never ran parallel. Just be careful with your out put power on your blues greens and reds they can't use as much power as the xp-g ones. I set my white drivers at 1.4 and my blues which have my reds and greens at 850 which is even a bit higher than I normally do for others. Most of the time 750 is a good number for the blues. Not sure what the parallel does to the math so you maybe right on but just make sure you don't use 1.2 in series with the blues over time it will hurt them. I have 42 LEDs on a 10x16 inch heat sink and you can barely even feel it get warm. Just make sure the air movement is good and the acrylics have some vents and you'll be fine.

 

My heat sinks were bare aluminum--I bought two from LEDGroupBuy and two directly from Heatsink USA. I sent them to Industrial plating in Omaha, NE, and specified: Type III, hardcoat anodize, Black. It was around $165 to do the four heatsinks, eight side brackets, and 16 spacers. I think regular anodize (type II) with black chromate conversion would have cost less and it may have been sufficient, but I wanted the extra durability and corrosion resistance of the hardcoat. I learned two things about the hardcoat:
First I spent several hours polishing everything to a mirror finish before anodizing. I couldn't wait to see the results... When the parts came back, they looked great, but were no longer reflective. I would not recomend polishing anything, at least not for hardcoat.
Second, I mounted the LED's with screws, so I had drilled and tapped all the holes before anodizing. This caused Industrial plating trouble because some of the chemicals stayed in the small holes and ran out, causing streaks in the black conversion coating. They insisted on redoing the parts to make them look good. I was very pleased with the result. If I were to do this again, I would consider anodizing before machining and just being careful not to scratch or mark up the finish too much.
I ran all my LED's in series. I considered running RB's in parallel strings of 12, but that would have limited the upper range on the amperage.  You also need to balance the voltage drop over all the strings or one strand may be brighter than the others.  I have Mean Well ELN-60-48D ballasts and I seem to remember that thier power output was the limiting factor, but I would have to double check the datasheet to be sure. I bought my ballasts, manual dimming kit, and hanging kits from RapidLED.
Right now, my ballasts are just screwed to a piece of plywood, but I will be redoing themd to making two "power supplies" soon to do something like you are suggesting. It will have two 0-10V input channels and moonlight inputs to interface with my RKE. It will have outputs to run one or two of my DIY LED fixtures. It will have switches to choose between an external controller (RKE), manual control (using the built in dimmer knobs), and be able to select either of the fixtures independently or both together. Parts should be here tuesday night. Cant wait!
Thanks for starting this thread. I love to follow builds of all sorts. I wish I would have taken pictures as I made my LED lights or been around to start a thread.

 

a friend of mine is doing a very small led build and ordered everything from rapidled. he told me there are selling black anodized heat sinks.