I saw a thread on here asking about what lights people use on their Broodstock tanks. We built this Cree XM-L LED lighting system for our Broodstock rack last August, and had been meaning to share it. We had one of those 16' flexible waterproof LED strips light one of our racks on fire, so we decided to stop using them. They said they were waterproof, but the salt creep got in and shorted it out. So we designed and built these lights which should actually be waterproof, and save a lot of electricity.
For the heat sink we purchased a bar of aluminum from the metal supermarket, and cut it into squares. We went with 6061 as it is supposed to be pretty corrosion resistant.
We ground the edges down
Then Milled a pocket for the LED to sit in, as well as channels for the wires, and zip-ties.
Next we got all the supplies ready. We purchased most of it from RapidLED.com
We soldered the wires onto the LED's, then stuck the LED star to the heatsink with thermal epoxy. Then Zip-tied it down for good measure:
Then we filled in everything with clear GE1 silicone.
We let them dry for a day or so, and then put them up.
It's been 4 or 5 months, and we absolutely love these. Other than being safer, they use a lot less electricity than the lights I had on the broodstock rack before. I used to use those double bright 5050 strips on the rack, which use ~75 watts for 16' (we have 3 rows about 30' long, so it used close to 500watts). We checked the new XM-L lighting system with our kill-a-watt meter, and it uses a whopping 45 watts for all 90 feet. It's actually brighter than the 5050strips, and grows a little algae, but not enough to bother anything.