Big Tank Owners! Who Has Had Problems With Sfiligoi Lights Or Who Has Not?

[Nuuze]

I use to do the 12 hour photoperiod with 6-8 hour halide. Now with the ACLS I do 10 hours halide and somethimes turn on the actinics. Due to the dimming capabilities of the ACLS you cannot have the actinics on first. I mentioned this to Sfiligoi, hopefully they take it into consideration because most everyone that runs actinic/halide combo runs this way and hopefully they make it an option too. I may re-wire the T5's with another power cord to my ACjr DC8 to power the T5's seperately to achive my old lighting scheme of 12 hours actinic and 6-8 hours halide... Decisions, decisions...

 

[clownnrnd]

I just ripped the magnetic 220v ballasts out of my 3x400w/T-5/moonlight XR4 Sfigiloi. I kept blowing fuses as well. after dealing w/ this light for around 7 months trying to get it to work right Will At Aquarium Obsessed bought me 3-400w IC's to replace the magnetics. Sfigiloi sent me 2 cheap capacitors to fix the problem. Put on the new capacitor and it blew a fuse again w/i a week. Sfigiloi's reply "are you sure he put it in right?". Give me a break.

I think David is right absolutely the worse customer service from a high end company.

One thing that keeps going through my mind after taking my fixture apart. With my fixture I could change from 250-400W bulbs simply by reconfiguring a wire. I'll attach a pic at the bottom. The orange wires are what you would change to go from 250>400w or vis versa. What they have done is inside the fixture they have a 250w ballast as well as a 70w ballast. If you reconfigure to run 250w bulb you are elemenating the 70w ballast. Now how do you take a 250w ballast and add a 70w ballast and come up w/ 400w's running through the bulb???

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[Nuuze]

That sounds pretty crazy cascading ballasts. Doesn't 250+70=320? There's only two points on a fuse, how can one put it in wrong?!

How are the IC ballasts working out for you clownnrnd? I hope a lot better.

 

[Fliger]

I'm figuring when all is said and done I'll just have to buy new ballasts on my own. At some point I'll get new fuses, and I'm sure they'll blow. Then Sfiligoi won't go any further, ask me if I put it in right, and I'll be screwed. Hey, I'm the winner of an Icecap contest for re-wiring a Tek-Light and the Sunlight NG with a 660. I'm a genius. :lol:

Funny though - Reefgeek, fellow reefers and another great vendor have all stepped up to help me. I could probably swap out some components with donated ones - but I don't want to invest all the time and a couple weeks later have to take the light down again (its very heavy). So if I end up doing any work other than replacing fuses, I'll just gut the damn thing and put in all US components. I might go 250W, then I'll have four new 400W bulbs for sale! (I have two Ushios & two Radiums waiting to fire)

Nuuze - I'd totally just rewire the T5's if I were you. I dunno, I couldn't have a tank without them running standalone. Your setup looks awesome, BTW.

Chad, thanks for all your help. I'm sure I'll be calling you eventually.

 

[clownnrnd]

David- I hear ya when you say these things are heavy. I tried as hard as I could to not get into the whole taking it down and putting it back up thing. I'm sure it would just be a matter of time before something happened to my tank . Whenever you need anything David don't be shy.

Nuuze- As David said, fantastic tank. As you, I can only come up w/ 320w as well .

The Ice Caps have run flawlessly. I think I have heard that new Sfigiloi's are going to use IC's. Be a good idea IMO. This fixture w/ IC ballasts would be crazy. Then you would have a company who would stand behind their ballasts.

Chad

 

[Fliger]

So you're saying I only have 320W in this fixture, firing 400W bulbs? (hypothetically speaking, if my bulbs actually fired) Does that mean I'm underdriving my bulbs? Can Alessandro or AO comment on that? I guess I could ask over in the AO forum later today.

 

[mfinch99]

Fliger, It is a bummer to see the poor service you guys are receiving from Sfiligoi. It is ridiculous what you guys are going through for the amount of money that you spent on these fixtures.

I am a newbie to the hobby. I do not have a "Large Reef Tank" qualifying for this forum but I am building a "Large Reef System" with a total water volume of 250G. My tank is actually 92G Corner. I did that so that I could upgrade to a larger tank with less headache and cost in the future. I have purchased really good equipment way overrated for my current system and it will support any tank that I would upgrade to.

You mentioned good lights out there with better customer service. I have looked at Giesemann but they don't appear to have a comparable fixture that would work for my tank as nicely. I am really trying to find one fixture that will do it all (Halides, T5 and Moonlights) that will be sufficient to cover my entire tank. Can you give me some examples that would work with my tank?

I did talk to Dirtyreefer about his light. His ACLS is running the v1.8 firmware and adjust in the 15 minute increments and does not have the T5 override. And like you I was not to keen with the ship to Italy for upgrade. They should really make that part easier. Also, Since I am new to the hobby I figured it would be best to get the 400W since I could use 250W and use the 400W when the time came.

I definitely could not blame you for putting "Don't buy Sfiligoi" in your signature with what you have been through.


clownnrnd, Perhaps you should have video taped it and sent them a bill for your time and labor. ;-) LMK if you come up with the solution on how to upgrade a 250W to 400W. I was curious about that myself.

 

[MSHUR]

Guys,
I am reading this thread and thinking how lucky i am to order just a fixure with out Mh ballasts. I will be using my old IC -400w.
I did order only T-5 ballasts.
David, I hope you be able to fix this problem really soon. I would be very upset if i had to spend so much $$ and have this headache .

mike

 

[clownnrnd]

David, I'm not sure how much power you are running through your bulb. My fixture is a 400w version that can be switched to 250w or vise versa. If your fixture does not switch to 250w you may have just one 400w ballast inside the fixture. If you have the orange jumper wires inside the end cover like in the picture of mine above then I would say yes you are running 320w. Unless of course I am not understanding something w/ the way electricity works. seeing as your fixture is down you could turn it upside down and take out the little phillips head screws along the top/by the vent screen and along the T-5 lens and the metal side panel will come off. Then you can look and see if you have 2 ballasts or just 1-400w ballast.

Mfinch99, The video would of been blood,sweat and a whole lot of tears and me sitting there wondering how I just spent all of this money to end up w/ this. It turned out OK but I should of never been expected to fix this thing myself after spending so much on it. Then consider that I payed for it 6-7 months previous w/ nothing to show for my money spent.


Best way to upgrade a 250 > 400w ? ...... Buy a 400w IC ballast and wire it direct to the mogul sockets. I wired my IC's direct to the fixture then once inside the fixture I used their buss bar type thing w/ set screws and their wire to their mogul socket. So basically into the buss bar w/ IC pig tails > out of the buss bar w/ a piece of their wire direct to the mogul socket. All wires are grounded to the frame of the fixture in the same way they had everything grounded. DO NOT try to use their pigtails from the fixture to the quick disconnect. I tried to rewire the quick disconnects w/ the IC pigtails on one side and the pigtail from the fixture on the other side and it ended up that I think the wires were too long and the ballast sensed too much resistance or something becouse it would not fire the bulb on the far end of the fixture. Would of made a cleaner install but I did'nt want to take a chance and cut the pigtails shorter on the IC ballasts to see if it would work w/ shorter wires.

Chad

 

[Nuuze]

Okay, now you made me curious!

I have my side plates open. Keep in mind that I have th ALCS version.

Looks like the MH bulbs for my unit are directly wired as usual with 120v going into the ACLS.

With a volt meter I discovered something! For the T5's the ACLS powers 120v feed to the fixture for the T5's. But once it goes into the fixture I just noticed a transformer buried in the middle of the fixture that reads 115 to 220 Transfo Transformator and the T5 ballasts read 220v! The transformer has 3 wires, 1 ground, 1 115v and 1 220v. So my T5's are being driven by a 220v transformer and ballasts!

So I wonder if that's why my T5's seems so much brighter than everyone elses I see. Would I save more energy if I use US spec 120v T5 ballasts instead and eliminate the Euro spec transformer and ballasts?

And the moon is wired direct, not sure how many volts until tonight but there seems to be some sort of diode in between.

 

[clownnrnd]

Wow, yours is alot cleaner looking for sure. I have about 50% of the stuff stripped out of mine now. I took out the capacitors (white tubes) Then those three square boxes just below where the wires come in are ignitors and they came out.

I was shocked when I pulled off the metal covers to find all of the hardware that was buried between the reflectors. I weighed all the stuff and I think it weighed something like 24lbs.

thing is the fixture and reflectors are awesome. When I bought mine I looked long and hard to try and find a fixture that would light a 30 F>B tank well and IMO this was the best of the bunch. Basically a LAIII in a fixture.


Chad

 

[Nuuze]

Yep, I bought the fixture for the same reason. The reflectors are freakin cool. I thought about saving money and hanging the raw lumearc reflectors but it wouldn't of matched the Euro look and plus my wife gave me "the look" when I showed her the raw reflectors.

I'm currently modding my fixture right now as we speak to bypass the T5's from the ACLS so I can run actinics longer and lessen my halides from 10 hours...

 

[clownnrnd]

Ya, the theory of not having the actinics on for the dawn>dusk and reverse did'nt seem to make much sense to me. I can't wait for a nice true (URI VHO) actinic to come out. I used to love the look of the corals under these lights.

Chad

 

[Kaiden]

You mean to tell me with the ACLS I can not set the T5's to go on before the MH's and turn off after the MH's? Who's idea was that? Wow, I just threw away some serious coin!

 

[Nuuze]

Let there be actinics!

I did it!

It's been a couple months being able to light my tank with actinics alone. Boy did I miss it!

 

[Nuuze]

What I did first is talk to my niece's fiance, he's an electrician. He said the left prong (taller one) of the outlet is neutral and the right (smaller one) is live or hot.

I traced all the wires, the block on the right is from the two ACLS. Starting from the top, 1 & 2 are for the halide fartherst away. 3 & 4 is the halide closest. 5 & 6 is for the T5's.

I traced the two wires for the T5 to find which one was the neutral and which one was hot. #5 was neutral, it went to the T5 ballasts and 115v-220v transformer. #6 also went to the 220v transformer then went to the left block.

This is the block on the left from the 220v transformer to T5 ballasts and neutral. I left it alone.

 

[Nuuze]

Next I notched the heat shroud screen a bit where I can change it back if I ever wanted to.

The I tinned the new wires with solder and wire nutted off the old ones and ran two grounds for the ballasts since there were none.

Almost done here butting up every thing.

What do you think?

 

[Nuuze]

Here's the other side of the fixture. Thinking about it you can fit a lot of thing inside this big ole fixture. IC ballasts, fans...hmmm.

 

[clownnrnd]

Looks great, nice mod. Not having a actinic lighting period would drive me crazy.

Chad

 

[mfinch99]

Nice mod Nuuze. Very professional looking. Are you controlling your T5's with the Aqua Controller now?

Mike