Planeden Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 glad the digis have come back. maybe they just partied a little too hard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dustin Pedretti Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 It is spring break time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manny Posted March 13, 2014 Share Posted March 13, 2014 Maybe its a sign you need a new samurai sword. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted April 1, 2014 Author Share Posted April 1, 2014 New toy. I guess I can say now "why can't we all just get along? Mp40 on one end, wp25 on the other. The mp40 is only louder right when I start it up but after it runs a minute or two it's dead silent. Have it in reef crest mode but it must be turned all the way down. Flow is too wide and powerful for my 55 gallon to run it any higher than it's lowest setting, wp25 is on else. Good stuff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted April 1, 2014 Share Posted April 1, 2014 ha, your own little experiment on foreign relations? of course, no telling how many MP40 parts are made in china. maybe miscegenation is the key to tolerance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted April 5, 2014 Author Share Posted April 5, 2014 I anyone has seen my threads here and on reef central in my debates over which LEDs to choose. Kessils vs BML vs Reef Breeders...the decision is done. Metal halides coming soon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Veni Vidi Vici Posted April 5, 2014 Share Posted April 5, 2014 Cant go wrong with the MH. However I would like to try LEDs in the very near future on a frag rack thats going to go in my sump/refigium. What ballasts are you getting? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobR Posted April 5, 2014 Share Posted April 5, 2014 Yeah for the metal halides! Don't think you can go wrong with them. What bulbs do you plan on running? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted April 5, 2014 Author Share Posted April 5, 2014 First shot is a quick panoramic with the t5s. Been running an aquatic life 4x54 t5 fixture since I got the tank. It's a fantastic unit, and anyone not wanting to pay ATI prices, would be well served with one of these. Individual reflectors, good fans, easy to program, excellent par. Runs cool. Bulb combo is currently 3 ATI blue+, one ATI coral+. To be honest I've had great growth out of this fixture, and have no complaints outside of boredom. I wanted something different and am daring to even have better growth and colors than I already enjoy. This thread has numbered days anyway because I'm upgrading to a new tank in the near future. Had my sights set on a 75 gallon for extra front to back space, but I'm thinking I can find a 90 or even a 4 ft 120 gallon in a comparable price range and not have to upgrade much gear. So lighting and flow needed to be beefed up a bit for this increased space. Hence my decision to start upgrading the expensive stuff now. Seeing recent troubles with other club member tank upgrades have me scared for my sps. I'll be fragging a lot off for people to babysit for me until I test the waters out in the soon to be purchased tank. For lights I did a lot of led research, and while I've seen some fantastic led tanks here in the club, and on the web, it seems like every led success story is met with a metal halide success story that trumps it. It seems like the sole purpose of the led market is to mimic metal halide growing power and shimmer, but not it's heat and cost. Heat and running cost aren't a tremendous concern for me right now, so I kind of figured, why pay a boat load for an imitation that isn't quite perfected yet, when I can get the real deal for 1/2 the cost. I truely don't mean to step on any led fans toes here as I feel quality is quality and you can have great results with any form of lighting if it's used correctly. I just wanted to try the combo many consider to be the gold standard of ligjting. Halides. Specifically the combo I went with. If it doesn't work out. Someone will want to buy them. For now I'm excited! The move was sparked by a generous trade by a local, who donated his old halide stuff he wanted gone, in trade for some easy frags. Of the whole lot the only thing I actually kept was a Hamilton m80 ballast. Knowing how these things are getting harder to come by, I took it as a good omen and began sourcing other pieces. I ordered a matching Hamilton m80 ballast from reef geek to have matching ones, and thanks to arc member "Honeysreef" I now also have two Sunlight Supply Lumenmax2 pendants, loaded with nearly new 250 watt Radiums. Radiums and m80s = a winning combo from what I've researched. He was gonna sell me the lumenmax elites originally, but they went to someone else, which works out in my favor because those are large. These Lumenmax 2's are 11"x15" in size and fit perfectly over my 55 gallon and will still work well when I upgrade tanks. Rectangular in shape to hold the socket assembly in a sealed box, the reflector is square. Pics are test run pics. The first heavy blue one is my t5 for reference. All the rest are halide pics. They're directly on the tank for the pics just for reference. They get very hot so I won't run them like that. I'll be building a canopy to have them mounted about 18-20" off the water with fans to help dissipate some heat. I'd like to try without a chiller for the time being. I know it CAN be done. I keep the house cool at about 72 degrees so that should help. Right now my 300 watt heater kicks on every 30 minutes to keep the tank at 80 degrees so the halides may help. No detail shots yet. I like the color a lot! So crisp and bright. Not as blue as I expected. On the 55 I'll be limited to a short photoperiod so I'm not sure what I'll do about supplemental viewing yet. No room for led strips or t5 yet. On the new tank I'll likely get strip lights of some sort. Anyhow. That all for now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Veni Vidi Vici Posted April 5, 2014 Share Posted April 5, 2014 Ewwwwwwwww! Ahhhhhhhh! BRAVO! Another awsome reef tank I've seen here at ARC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 Looks great bpb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobR Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 Ha love it that you are going to be running the radiums on M80 ballast, that is awesome!!!! The pics of the new combo look great, cant wait to see the new tank upgrade as well. You should def go with the 120 if you can find one, that is a great tank footprint IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dustin Pedretti Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 Ha love it that you are going to be running the radiums on M80 ballast, that is awesome!!!! The pics of the new combo look great, cant wait to see the new tank upgrade as well. You should def go with the 120 if you can find one, that is a great tank footprint IMO.That's what I keep telling him! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted April 6, 2014 Author Share Posted April 6, 2014 Thanks guys! I think this marks the first time my tank has been referred to as awesome from another forum member. That's a milestone! @ Rob, yes sir! That's part of the reason I've been following your tank build. I noticed you're using the same lights I was going for. I look foreword to your progress as well. I've considered the BML radium clones to use as supplemental ligjting that way the dawn dusk looks similar to the day lights. Dustin...yeah I know. Waiting for the right deal. Keep sending me links Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dustin Pedretti Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 You got it buddy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobR Posted April 10, 2014 Share Posted April 10, 2014 Hey I was wondering what your plan was to acclimate the corals to the new lights? Are you going to shorten your photoperiod and slowly ramp up until you get where you want? Or were you planning on raising the lights and then slowly lowering? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted April 10, 2014 Author Share Posted April 10, 2014 Good question. I'm not real positive how I want to go about this. I've got changes coming up as mentioned so I don't know if it would be worth while to run them at all on my 55 gallon. I'm having some hesitancy on how to go about the switch which includes lighting acclimation. I've seen more failures than successes with tank changes, especially with large-ish sps colonies. I never thought I'd reach this point two years ago starting off, and I know I don't have RC TOTM basketball size or platter sized acropora, but I'm to the point now to where some of my colonies are large. That ORA Stuber Stag on the far left is easily 40 branches or more and about 8" tall and wide. And the purple montipora cap is probably about 10" in diameter or so, and is acting as a natural epoxy, encrusting itself onto the back glass and all 3 surrounding rocks as well. Gonna be a shame to break it in the move. I'll be setting up the new tank (decided on a 90 gallon) in the garage and getting a bit of new rock and sand cycling in there with some koralias since bacteria don't seem to be as temperature sensitive as corals and fish are. (I kept a rubbermaid tub with rock cycling in temperatures fluctuationg from the 40's to the 80's from day to day a year or so ago in the spring/winter change and the cycle stayed alive). I've even cycled rock in as warm as mid 90's with active live bacteria that didnt die off, so that's not as big a concern. I don't have the room in my home for another tank right now (well...I think I do...my wife would respectfully disagree, so new cycle is to be done in the garage, which she also doesn't know yet). Onto lighting... I plan to get most of my colonies fragged out and in several tanks in the area in case something goes horribly wrong with the transfer and my colonies all RTN and die. That way I can re-introduce some of my favorite ones if need be. I've seen people do quick sps tank changes without issue entirely, and others lose literally everything even after being careful and dragging out the process. At this point my fingers are crossed. Lights MUST go in a canopy of sorts. Open back for ventillation, possibly open sides as well, but the front must be shielded. No compromising on that. I absolutely hate peering into the tank and being blinded by overhead light, and even worse, I hate the entire room being BLUE all the time, plus the glare on the tv is not manageable. I can't think of a good way to raise or lower lights in a canopy without it being so tall it would look silly. So, I'll be doing my acclimation via photoperiod. I'm debating on whether I should even run them at all on my 55 gallon. going from 216 watts, to over 600 watts of halide (don't m80 ballasts drive the bulbs to over 300 watts each?) is a massive leap in lighting, so I would have to reduce the photoperiod to like 3 hours a day or so (recommended to me). I'd hate to have such a short viewing window. And as the pendants are so large, I cannot fit any other lighting on my current tank. But...Having them acclimated to the halides before the switch, instead of changing tank AND lighting method at once might be a good idea. I'm not sure what would be the best practice. At any rate, tomorrow I'm going to assemble a quick canopy just so I can take some more pics and see how the spread is at 12" above the water line. I don't think I can keep them up though because I want to see my tank more than 3 hours a day. Once I upgrade tanks I'll have room for a BML strip or something similar to act as a dim morning and evening viewing until I get my halides acclimated up to a 6 to 8 or so hour photoperiod. I was thinking about a BML Super Actinic like you're running...but I'm afraid itll be too blue. Pics of it make it look like a brighter version of my moonlights and I want a bit more spectrum even in my dusk/dawn lighting. I may have BML do a custom spectrum, where the Super actinic is modified to remove the 405 nm violets, and use 420 nm violets in place, and possibly ad like 1 660 nm red and/or 1 neutral white per cluster. I think that would fit the bill. Warm it up just a touch. Somewhere basically in between the super actinic, and the 20k radium clone strip. I want it to be a definite night time blue, but not THAT blue. Plus...radiums are deficient in 420 nm so having those on the strip may not be a bad idea anyway. Just brainstorming. I also found a bridgelux strip someone in dallas is building and selling that has the same spectrum as the reef radiance black box units which would also be a good idea as well. they're super cheap. Thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobR Posted April 10, 2014 Share Posted April 10, 2014 Yes you bring up a lot of great points there. The other option would be to buy some window screen from home depot/lowes and cut like 4 or 5 pieces to put over the tank. You would start with all 5 pieces and the Remove a piece each week until you had none left. This would give your corals time to acclimate to the new lights without having to shorten your photoperiod or raise and lower. That's a hard choice if you know you are going to upgrade, but getting the coral acclimated now IMO will save them some stress when you move to the larger tank. If you can get the light acclimation out of the way i would think the livestock would go through much less stress than trying to do both at once. It sounds like you have a very good plan to get the new tank off the ground form fragging to cycling. There are some pretty cool custom canopies that I have seen where they have built tracks every two inches on the side so that you can raise and lower the lights as needed for bulb changes/acclimating. Dunno how complicated it would be to do something like that but it may be something to think about. I see you are in round rock and college station, if you are ever in round rock I am not too far from ikea and you are welcome to come take a look at the lights in person if you think it would help you make a decision on what you want to try and get with your supplemental. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ckyuv Posted April 11, 2014 Share Posted April 11, 2014 Just saw your build thread again, I haven't read it in a long time, the tank looks amazing! Man those colonies look great, whenever our tanks do well we always go bigger thats sweet you went mh, I had seen your discussion about kessils and know your a t5 fan as well so that was a random thing to read! Very nice though I'll be followin along. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted April 11, 2014 Author Share Posted April 11, 2014 I like your advice. I think it's pretty sound. The fewer the adjustments all at once the better. I did a little work today. After $10 spent at lowes I had in my hands some of their finest 1x2 pine boards to build a make shift canopy. I will not run these lights full time until I have a nice, stand-matched furniture quality canopy to run. If I were a bachelor that would be one thing, but being that my better half is a little pickier than I am about what the house looks like, this build was merely for experimentation. I wanted to see what the spread was like, intensity, response over a longer period of time, and most importantly temperature. I ran the lights for 2 hours today and the apex only showed a 0.2 degree temperature increase. This was roughly 18" off the surface, and with NO fans or cooling in place at all. Just swapped lights and thats it. I'm happy about that. I feel comfortable about putting a front and/or sides on a canopy with a couple fans inside and my temperatures shouldnt get too crazy. i peaked at 80.7. That's certainly in safe range. The above pictures were after literally 5 minutes running. I took a couple more today after 2 hours burn time, and the results were dramatic. I had a fellow reefer over for the experiment and he even made mention to watching the sps colors seem to change before our eyes. This guy is by no means an sps afficionado or anything either so it wasnt my imagination. Good stuff. Very happy with the colors. I took alot of close ups, but I'll try to get some better ones tomorrow, and I'll likely even try to take some identical shots with my T5s just for comparison sake. If for no other reason that we forum goes love a thread with pics. These are WITHOUT any actinic supplementation. Just 2x250 watt Radiums on M80 ballasts and thats it The canopy turned out horrible. I was in a rush to get it done and mis measured in some places but I didn't glue so it'll be an easy fix. Funny thing. The other guy that was over today took one look at my "canopy" and shook his head and started laughing. I said "i know i know it's just temporary so I could see how they both look running and so i could test my temperatures." Now I knew what this guy did for a living, but for some reason I didnt put it together. His only response was "let me get my tools over and we will get some measurements and if you want I can give you a quote." Guy is some form of operations manager for a large commercial level cabinetry builder. Heck, every home in my neighborhood was built with their cabinets in every room. Funny. I didn't even think to ask for help. Hopefully he'll help a fellow hobbyist out on the cheap! Anyhow. Here's a couple more snapshots. And one of my trusty circ saw. I'm a former woodworking hobbyist (when I was in high school, built ALOT), but havent touched a tool in 15 years. I enjoy any chance I can now get to use my shiny new circ saw. I really need a table saw and a miter saw before I brave building my own load bearing stand. My manual cuts on the saw horses aren't quite square enough to reliably support weight. LOL I imagine you'll all appreciate my very technical drafting skills. Sketched on the back of junk mail, and measured on the kitchen floor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted April 11, 2014 Author Share Posted April 11, 2014 Just saw your build thread again, I haven't read it in a long time, the tank looks amazing! Man those colonies look great, whenever our tanks do well we always go bigger thats sweet you went mh, I had seen your discussion about kessils and know your a t5 fan as well so that was a random thing to read! Very nice though I'll be followin along. Thank you sir! I appreciate the kind words. Looking back at page 1 I can't believe how tiny some of these were!! This is about 1 year or so of growth from primarily 1" frags. Just T5. Don't let anyone tell you they don't work. JeeperTy gave me some great advice and told me if I was happy to keep using them because they'll grow SPS. Just was bored and wanted something different. I researched lighting for so many months. I still maintain after all I've learned that Kessils are probably the best LEDs on the market. The design has some flaws that are easily overcome by simply using alot of them (shadowing), but that is just flat out not in my budget with a single income family. On a 90 gallon I'd want probably 3 A360WE units plus hardware and that pricetag just wasnt gonna happen. I'd be saving for a year before I could set that much aside. Alot of factors drove my decision to MH which up until a couple months ago wasnt even in the pool of considerations. I was sooner gonna bite the bullet on an ATI sunpower than MH lights. But...this and that happened and I ran into some good deals here and there and after enough research this is where I'm at. As I mentioned I'm gonna try to give this a go without a chiller. I know it can work, just hope it can work for ME. Anyhow. Thanks again. Happy to have people follow along! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ckyuv Posted April 11, 2014 Share Posted April 11, 2014 I bet you can make it work without a chiller! I do apologize if you said it already but what bulbs are you using? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted April 11, 2014 Author Share Posted April 11, 2014 Those would be 250 watt radiums. My current t5 are 3 ati blue+, one ati coral+ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted April 12, 2014 Share Posted April 12, 2014 You're gonna be happy with the radiums. I love mine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobR Posted April 15, 2014 Share Posted April 15, 2014 Love the way the radiums look on the tank! They really bring out the colors of your corals. Sounds like you may have the hook up with the cabinet builder!!! Any progress on the canopy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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