d2mini's "Essential Focus" Mixed Reef Build

d2mini's "Essential Focus" Mixed Reef Build

Dennis, not to rain on anyone's parade, but that tank had been running radions for only 3 months at most at the time of the article and before that ran an 8 bulb sunpower with reefbrites :)

Granted he was running radions over his frag tank and sounds like he may have it worked out. Do you happen to know if he has a build thread somewhere?

Don't get me wrong, I have high hopes!!! I'm very curious as to your experience.

Don


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dcmartinpc said:
Dennis, not to rain on anyone's parade, but that tank had been running radions for only 3 months at most at the time of the article and before that ran an 8 bulb sunpower with reefbrites :)

Don't get me wrong, I have high hopes!!! I'm very curious as to your experience.

Don


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Yep, he's a friend of mine. :)

From the article...
"I have also setup a frag section in the sump underneath the tank lit by Radions and started to experiment with the light intensity and spectrum there. It took six months of trial and error until I started to get good color in my frags. Eventually I had it dialled-in in such a way that any coral I would frag from the main display would not lose its coloration in the frag tank.

Here is a few things I have learned about lighting the tank with Radions: PAR can be extremely low - for about 8 hours I would run only blue channel at a 100% giving me PAR of 220 and another hour of turning on whites to get a more natural look that would give me a chance to examine true coral colours. Having a PAR meter turned out to be indispensable - I was able to ensure proper light coverage and intensity. Once I've learned these tricks I was able to keep any high-end acro I wanted, bringing in corals that were grown and coloured under Metal Halides and not losing any color. At the end of the experiment I would consistently get a better color under LEDs than under T5 to everyone's surprise. Having run this for a year I finally decided to upgrade my main tank lighting to Radions"

But yeah... fingers crossed! ;)
 
d2mini's "Essential Focus" Mixed Reef Build

I just updated my post with the frag tank bit right before you posted the reply :) I noticed that part right after I posted of course!

And now.... We wait...

I may have missed it, but do you have a QT setup yet? Do you have anything hiding there you are keeping from us? ;)

Don


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It's interesting that both Dtum's observations and EcoTech's "Coral Lab" note that optimal results were running the violet/blue channels near max intensity, with much reduced green/red/white.

Since almost all LED fixtures tend to have much reduced far-UV and hyperviolet spectrum compared to MH & T5HO setups, it may well be that running the Radions in that manner (heavily blue-shifted) "rebalances" the entire spectrum to look more like the spectral output of T5HO or MH set-ups in the sub 410 nm range.

Time will tell, but it'd be very interesting to see what a high-end LED fixture would do with sufficient radiometric output in the 390, 400, 410 and 420nm spectral bands to match what's put out with MHs or T5HO "actinic" bulbs. I suspect that considering the relatively inefficiency of true UV LEDs that such a fixture would be quite expensive. But I'm betting that a lot of the reefing community would pay the $$$ if such a setup was proven to work well.
 
dkeller_nc said:
It's interesting that both Dtum's observations and EcoTech's "Coral Lab" note that optimal results were running the violet/blue channels near max intensity, with much reduced green/red/white.

Since almost all LED fixtures tend to have much reduced far-UV and hyperviolet spectrum compared to MH & T5HO setups, it may well be that running the Radions in that manner (heavily blue-shifted) "rebalances" the entire spectrum to look more like the spectral output of T5HO or MH set-ups in the sub 410 nm range.

Time will tell, but it'd be very interesting to see what a high-end LED fixture would do with sufficient radiometric output in the 390, 400, 410 and 420nm spectral bands to match what's put out with MHs or T5HO "actinic" bulbs. I suspect that considering the relatively inefficiency of true UV LEDs that such a fixture would be quite expensive. But I'm betting that a lot of the reefing community would pay the $$$ if such a setup was proven to work well.
Click to expand...
This would be a good question for Luc in this thread. He's one of the engineers at Phillips that headed up spinning off a marine reef led light fixture.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2548454
 
I was wondering why you went with 3 radians instead of 2? How long is your tank. I'm thinking about switching to them. I've got a 210g that's 6ft long. Hope I'll only need 3. Can't wait to see how they work out for you.
 
Hi Dennis,
I also struggle with leds. I have a TMC V2 ILUMENAIR 1200 and still haven't tamed the beast. Somepoints it "burns" the corals, others are great and others are "a sleep".
But the energy eficiency and the huge customisation possibilities and control keeps me believing that the led technology shall be part of the future on reef keeping.
Please go foward, keep sharing information and let us know when you'll develop a real time PAR feedback gizmo.

Rgds
AR

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Jetmech2000 said:
I was wondering why you went with 3 radians instead of 2? How long is your tank. I'm thinking about switching to them. I've got a 210g that's 6ft long. Hope I'll only need 3. Can't wait to see how they work out for you.
Click to expand...

Better, more even coverage.
My tank is 31" from to back so I wanted to hang them that orientation.
So i have 2 pucks front to back and I still only have 3 pucks across the 47" length of the tank.
 
Dennis, just read the whole thread. Congrats on an outstanding build!

As a fellow Houstonian, it's great to see such good work happening in the area. Also noticed the pic with Dennis from FJW, love that place!

Will be closely following. Cheers!
 
jason2459 said:
This would be a good question for Luc in this thread. He's one of the engineers at Phillips that headed up spinning off a marine reef led light fixture.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2548454
Click to expand...

Wow, that's quite a thread to read through. Rather unfortunately, the LED selections that Luc noted for the Coral Care fixture will not address (one of) the achilles' heel of LED fixtures - insufficient radiometric output below 410nm.

This was his quote:

"We choose 5 main LED types.
White (6500K)
Cyan
Pc-Amber
Royal Blue
"deep" Blue
We use a custom binning and kitting process to increase the spectral range of the solution. In example... the average wavelength of the "deep"blue LED is 420 nm. But we actually implement LED's in a range between 412 and 428 nm. We know (with the binning and kitting agreements we make with our LED supplier Lumileds) that the average colorpoint is correct, but that the wavelength spread within this area is broader then by selecting a single wavelength. This gives the advantage that the spectral content is a bit broader what improves color rendering (and some secondary benefits for Coral growth).
Click to expand...

It's unfortunate, because I was hopeful. Oh well, back to T5HOs.
 
cesarjimen said:
Dennis, just read the whole thread. Congrats on an outstanding build!

As a fellow Houstonian, it's great to see such good work happening in the area. Also noticed the pic with Dennis from FJW, love that place!

Will be closely following. Cheers!
Click to expand...

Thanks!
And yeah, Dennis is great. As is Nick with OceanLife Aquariums if you haven't been there yet. :)
 
Dennis,

Are you concerned at all that you are making two significant changes in this build? Triton method and the switch back to LEDs? If things aren't on track it feels like you will have a lot of questions. That said, based on your amazing previous tanks, I just can't imagine this build not working out.
 
choss said:
Dennis,

Are you concerned at all that you are making two significant changes in this build? Triton method and the switch back to LEDs? If things aren't on track it feels like you will have a lot of questions. That said, based on your amazing previous tanks, I just can't imagine this build not working out.
Click to expand...

I'm not bring over any coral, starting fresh so no, not really. :)
Will get it dialed in as I go.
 
Time to pack my bags! ;)

i-ZKbLKB9.jpg


i-sDLC7Wt.png
 
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