180-Gallon Upgrade Starts NOW!!!

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I have just read all 48 pages!! And basically all I can say is WOW! Well, a little bit more... you have the patience of... I dont know what. Your black fish (i cant remember how to spell it -_-, the ones you swam with in Hawaii) fish is AMAZINGG! And your whole tank has grown into something beautiful! You must be proud. Keep on going, im going to be watching this thread!
 
GoldieLocks1 said:
I have just read all 48 pages!! And basically all I can say is WOW! Well, a little bit more... you have the patience of... I dont know what. Your black fish (i cant remember how to spell it -_-, the ones you swam with in Hawaii) fish is AMAZINGG! And your whole tank has grown into something beautiful! You must be proud. Keep on going, im going to be watching this thread!
Click to expand...
Speaking of patience, you read all 48-pages...thank you! My achilles tang is a beautiful fish. Unfortunately he is labeled as expert only as they are hard to keep alive, and he is testing me right now. Thanks again for joining my thread, stay posted.
 
I will be interested to know how the LEDs work for you in a tank that deep. I would love to try a LED set up over my 90 but i don't have the money and i was concerned that i would have problems with the depth. I was thinking i would have to put 40-45 degree optics on them and then put the diodes close together to keep it from looking streaky. I don't have any actual experience with the LEDs and the different optics widths. Do you have access to a PAR meter? It would be really interesting to see what kind of light you are getting at the bottom from the LEDs once you have them set up.
 
pat8you said:
I will be interested to know how the LEDs work for you in a tank that deep. I would love to try a LED set up over my 90 but i don't have the money and i was concerned that i would have problems with the depth. I was thinking i would have to put 40-45 degree optics on them and then put the diodes close together to keep it from looking streaky. I don't have any actual experience with the LEDs and the different optics widths. Do you have access to a PAR meter? It would be really interesting to see what kind of light you are getting at the bottom from the LEDs once you have them set up.
Click to expand...
Well for now my tank will only be 33% LED, I will still have halides over the left and right sides. If I like the LEDs I may eventually switch to all LED. I wish I had a way to measure PAR, maybe I can borrow from somebody. But my measurement will be off from typical because my light has to go through a 10"x3/4" brace. However I could measure. Par on the sides because my heatsink is longer than 10".
I doubt you would need 40-degree unless you are mounting them super high up.
 
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I've been watching you guys go back and forth today, don't either of you work? JK

I'm still not 100% convinced that PAR is going to be the biggest factor in LED lighting. I know I do it all the time but the guy that did the 75g tank with LEDs was getting lowish PAR at the bottom of his tank but his corals were responding better than I ever thought they would. I really think that LED lighting is still so new to reef tanks that we don't yet understand how it reacts and influences growth in corals.
 
So Ziggy you are admitting to not only not working either, but also being a stalker. Nice.

I do agree though, with all the LED threads I look through, I feel like there is no best way to measure them up to other lighting methods. Some fixtures have crazy high PAR and some have lower, but I really think the tunable and more concentrated wavelengths might have more of an effect on coral then we might think. I was reading a thread the other day on different color wavelenths bringing out certain colors in corals and started day dreaming on how cool it would be if a certain color light fixture could alter a corals main color variants and eventually we could naturally "selective breed" more "designer" corals.

Not very ethical or "green", but it killed a good 30 minutes of class whilst I wandered through the idea. :p
 
Ziggy953 said:
I've been watching you guys go back and forth today, don't either of you work? JK

I'm still not 100% convinced that PAR is going to be the biggest factor in LED lighting. I know I do it all the time but the guy that did the 75g tank with LEDs was getting lowish PAR at the bottom of his tank but his corals were responding better than I ever thought they would. I really think that LED lighting is still so new to reef tanks that we don't yet understand how it reacts and influences growth in corals.
Click to expand...

Working yes, but the problem is I still have the blackberry.

I think you are probably right. That makes sense when I wanted to talk PAR with the company I bought the LEDs from they were talking Lumens.
 
Working...no... at work with an internet connection... yes. Yeah it does seem that PAR is not a good measure of how effective LEDs are but i'm not sure how else to compare them.
 
Jimbo7 said:
Not very ethical or "green", but it killed a good 30 minutes of class whilst I wandered through the idea. :p
Click to expand...
:lol: That sounds familiar from when I was in college. Except I wasn't reefing then (7-years ago) but I had other interest to wander through to kill 30-minutes.
 
pat8you said:
Working...no... at work with an internet connection... yes. Yeah it does seem that PAR is not a good measure of how effective LEDs are but i'm not sure how else to compare them.
Click to expand...

I'm not in a rush to track the PAR meter, although it would be interesting. However, I just found out I must get a multimeter. I've never even heard of a multimeter.
 
Its been awhile since I have posted, but I'm back now, and I am well aware of what a multimeter is now. In the past month I finished 2-projects. 1. Adding some nice shelf rock to the tank in-between the ilsands to make more realestate for coral and 2. Provide a 3rd light source over the tank in-between my 2-halides, over my new shelves.
Here is what I added to the middle of my tank.
img_1180362_0_6ab3cc7f239fd0f4351889b926af720c.jpg


Here is my DIY LEDs wired up without optics/lenses.
img_1180362_1_366bef0abde1c5bbef91b51f666a77c3.jpg



All wired up here with optics/lenses, hanging kit and splash guard installed, along with 3x meanwell dimmable ballasts.
img_1180362_2_c95e71b5dda9a72829650a2a5234450a.jpg


I secured a fan on top by drilling a couple small holes in the sides of the heatsink and using zipties to securely hold the fan in place. I came up with this idea, because I think it makes it easy to change the fan out.
img_1180362_3_d6b526f6d41c39b36667826413dce712.jpg



Lights ON, controlled by my Neptune APEX
img_1180362_4_a7a6d726b1ac8123c5693c8538886389.jpg



Mounted in my canopy, and I was able to move my Halides closer to the sides since I finally have that 3rd light source in the middle. I couldn't use another halide because of the acrylic center brace. I needed something which is powerful, but does not put out heat.
img_1180362_5_1aa1e6c926d7f66c0212ff5e9c91926e.jpg
 
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ccCapt said:
Nice job on the LED's. How many and what kind of drivers are you using?
Click to expand...

Thanks ccCapt!
I am using:
8.5"x12" heat sink
XP-G White x12
XR-E Blue x24
Meanwell Dimmable Drivers x3

I'm glad I went with twice as many blue as white, the XP-G white are very bright. We will see how things go with the LEDs and SPS. If all works well, I may consider adding 2-more LED setups and take the halide/reflectors out. But not yet, for now this is simply because I could not have a halide over the 10"-wide by 3/4"-thick acrylic center brace.... as you can see in my last pic.
 
Should post some FTS's of both halides on, just LEDS on and all on. It will be interesting to see the difference. Looks good man, I really like that shelf rock you put up.
 
i like to selection of LEDs myself, love the color the pictures show, even if its not how they look in person
 
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