LED lighting system...

[nynex]

First off 5mm are too small for anything but moonlights.
I have 5mm LED arrays on all my tanks for moonlights and they work great, but
for a main light source they dont work..

I know someone who made one for their 3 gal and used 50 5mm leds with no
resistors...It worked for his 3 gal. He knows alot about this stuff, but he said
when he made the array he was still learning and got lucky on the no resistors
part, cause he was seriously over driving the LED's. It actually still works fine, he
told me.

But I used 10mm 145,000mcd super bright LEDs for mine, with 3 in a series and
4 series in each group. 36 LEDs total Half White andf Half Actinic Blue. I also used
9 Wide Angle Actinic LEDs for the moonlights. This was an array for my 3 gal Nano.
I put 1 resistor at the end of each series and the brightness was not good at all. So
then I tried it with no resistors and it was awesome!..for about 5 mins before I
blew out half the array. So now ive rebuilt the array and with the help of the
person who built the 50 led array...we figured to push the LEDs to the max
without blowing them out. I would need 12 volt 6ohm resistors. Ive also tried a
varied range of power supplys...12 volt 1.5 amp, 500ma and 800ma. I think with
the 500ma and 12 volt 6 ohm reisitors, it should push the LEDs to the max 3.8
volt without blowing them out.But im not holding my breath...Im losing faith in
this project.

I will pick up the 6 ohm resistors this week and see if they make any difference.

Here is a pic of thr array partially rebuilt.