Biocube 29 LED Build (Plenty of pics)

Well I am sitting here visiting family bored off my mind since everyone is at work... so I figured I would upload the pics I have and get my LED build thread started. The plan is to give it a completely stock look when looking at the tank. I have gutted the entire contents of the hood and am replacing it with the LED components.
I decided to make my heatsink myself to save a little money. The pre-drilled stuff is something like $50-65 once it's shipped. It's nice, but everything I read states that it is overkill and standard aluminum C-channel (aka U-channel) does the trick. For about $15 in parts from Lowe's (if you know of an aluminum shop I am told one can get the same parts for half that) I had everything I needed. I had planned on only buying 4' of 3/4'' C-channel, but all they had was 8'. For this reason I overbuilt the heatsink since I was forced to purchase that much in materials. All in all, it turned out great and I was able to spread the bulbs more evenly.
Unfortunately for tools, all I had to work with was a standard drill with various bits and a dremel with some cutting bits. Not really as cool as all the fancy equipment people use to make these sorts of things, but with a little effort I think I showed it can be done. Oh, almost forgot, I also used a manual rivet gun (it was the cheapest bottom of the barrel model from menard's that I got for $8 when I was making DIY lumenarcs a couple winters ago).
Here is my list of materials thus far.
8' of 3/4'' C-Channel
4' aluminum bracket (only used about half)
16 rivets
12 XR-E whites
12 XR-E Royal Blue
4 XP-E Royal blue
2x potentiometers (dimmers)
1x 10v power supply (old cell phone charger cable)
Tube of thermal grease
54 self-tapping aluminum screws
Tube of thermal grease
Enjoy the pics. I'll have more to come when I get back home and finish this thing up!
Here is the C-channel, cut into 8 pieces of 12" a pop

The 8.5" aluminum brackets. Forgive my ignorance, I know this isn't the actual term. Anyway, they connect everything together.

The completed heatsink. Note: I didn't had a drill press so the bit slipped here and there. I still think it looked pretty damn good considering I literally made this thing on the kitchen floor!

LEDs in place. I used thermal grease (sold for computer CPUs) along with the smallest self-tapping aluminum screws I could find. I didn't want to go the adhesive route... The four LEDs on the side I placed there just to simply max out each string. Those four are the less expensive XP-E's (since that is what was part of the group buy pricing). The rest are the higher quality XR-E's, which I got a great deal on through a trade.

The white string in action. Note that there are two blue (the XP-E's) on this string for a total of 14 LED's on the string.

The blue string in action.

Both strings in action (the blues seem more bright, but I have both strings running at about 40% in this pic. Cell phone camera has a hard time with the blue.

I don't have pics of the dimmers (I guess I forgot to snap a few!) Those will be placed into project boxes along with the drivers. Obviously I still have to mount everything nicely into the hood, so this is still very much a work in progress that will continue once I get back into town next week.
EDIT: I tried to link clickable thumbnails from photobucket, but GIRS doesn't seem to like the links, so full images is all I can do. Sorry!

 

Looks like I had a pic of the gutted hood. The only thing I am keeping in there is the original lighting on/off switch. It is unlikely I will use it, but it gives the hood a stock look and saves we the worry of trying to water seal the opening.

 

Alright. I got home Tuesday night and was eager to get this thing going before I had to go back to work this week, so pictures are scarce. There is still a little cleanup to go, but everything is wired properly.

I sort of overlooked the fact that this doesn't have breakaway cables like the original drivers did, so I am not sure how to get everything into the cabinet under the tank. I was thinking of cannibalizing the old drivers for the cables since nobody really showed any interest in buying them, but before I hack into those I'd like to visit other option (if there are any).

Also, does anyone know how to get the cables looking like one wire? I got heat shrink tubing for all the spliced that had to be made, but obviously this isn't for the entire length of the cable.

Anyway, here are some pics, enjoy!

Here is a $3 project box from radio shack I put the potentiometers in. I could have easily placed them in the same box that houses the drivers, but I plan on getting the controller module for the reefkeeper eventually so I figured this would be the cleanest option when I get rid of them. For those that may not know what this is for, it allows me to control the brightness of the lights. Left is whites, right is blues.


Here is the project box for the drivers which was $7 at radio shack. Two meanwell drivers plus all the extra wiring (I left all the spliced cable ends in there) fit perfectly. It almost felt like these things were made for them!


Here's a FTS with the blues on about 40% and whites on about 25%. Cell phone pic... doesn't do the lights justice. I just love the shimmer that I never had with fluorescent lighting. Don't take too much notice of the dirty tank. I think I am going to remove things and start over. I have too much aiptasia to know what to do with.

 

I had a lot of fun building this. Once I figure out what I am doing with the drivers (where to put them - - how to get them into the cabinet under the tank safely) I would love to build some more.
EDIT: Didn't catch the water temp question. Right now the tank is sitting at 80, which is about where it would be with the PC lighting. Theoretically you shouldn't see much of a jump in temps from PC to LEDs at all (based on what I read). That, along with the energy savings, are the two big selling points for me.