Finally went rimless. 57g starfire illuminata

just picked up another Kessil a350w from a member here. The plan is to run two 350's in a floating canopy with one more dimmable strip of led's from rapid. The current strip I have now is 4 rb, and 4 voilet/uv. My plan is to make that strip 6 uv and use two of the new total spectrum uv LED's, and 2 rb, then on the rear strip 2 warm white, 2 cool white, 2 neutral white, 1 red and 1 green. The idea behind the dual strips is that I would like to hang the lights a bit up off the water so its still view able from the top down, but also add some par to the kessils while staying full spectrum, adding in some uv, and also making it so i can take pics in the tank easier as the kessils make it pretty difficult to do.

Thoughts?
 
Thanks. I love the rimless also but already feeling the side affects of not having a top as I've lost two fish already.
 
Make a mesh screen/lid thing. There's a ton of DIY threads, and they're cheaper than replacing fish.

Losing fish really blows, sorry man.
 
They look pretty good if you use a wide clear mesh on a black frame. A buddy of mine has one that sits on little velcro patches he stuck to the corners of his tank.
 
The tank manufacturer ADA makes some plastic clips so a screen can fit below the rim. Still not the best for top down view but better than fish chips!
 
Lol yeah I might get there. Honestly I'm pretty stuburn and really do t want to give up the rimless look, so as bad as it is to say, the fish might just weed themselves out if they are jumpers.
 
Picked up a ati sunpower fixture that's currently 6 39w bulbs. I plan to gut the center section of 4 bulbs, fans, ballast etc. mount both my kessils in the ati with either one blue+ bulb and a actinic! or possibly two blue+ bulbs and then wire in three LEDs to a dimmable driver for moonlights. I already have everything, it's just a matter of figuring out how to make it all work well and deciding on the t5 bulbs I plan to use.
 
Should be a nice combo =). I have that same sunpower light running my tank up till now and it's awesome. Should work out good for you as the thing is a beast in the par dept.

Are you going to drill the top of the fixture and mount the kessils thru it? That would be awesome if you had them flush with the bottom of the light and poking out of the top aesthetically it would probably look OK too.. I would make sure you leave the cooling aspect of the fixture in tact as it boosts not only par but usually life of the bulbs.

I personally would only run b+ bulbs and maybe grab the others as spares to experiment with growth. But the b+ is gonna be the bulb you want Imo it has more than enough below the 450nm mark to thrive and I think you will be leaving par and performance on the table if you used an Actinic in there. Plus Actinic bulbs are the most short lived bulbs out there when it comes to color shift.

Build is looking nice man good job
 
Yeah the plan is to drill through the top and mount them so the air vents are still outside of the fixture. I really don't think I am going to concern myself with par as I should have enough par with just the kessils. The goal is to run the kessils blue channel as high as possible.. Assuming 70-80% on both lights and then run the t5's for a short period. Maybe 4hrs total.

As far as aesthetics I think it's going to look pretty crappy, so I'm going to eventually hide everything in a floating canopy that's matched to the skins I'm having made.
 
Just my .02 that seems like a really expensive fixture to chop up and only use 2 of the 6 bulbs and then mount into a canopy.
 
Yeah maybe. But I paid $100 for it. I don't see selling it and searching for a cheaper fixture just to save a few bucks. The other option is that I just mount the kessils in front of the ati fixture with a very slight angle towards the rear of the tank so I don't have a lot of spill out the front. I was just messing with the lights right now and thinking I might do that since it's not permanent and if I ever decided to go another route I could sell everything off and have a large chunk of coin towards another light setup.. That most likely being the ati hybrid powermodule anyways.
 
Let there be lights.. Lots of light. Only running two bulbs of the t5 and have the kessils turned down a bit, but it's still A LOT of light.

 
So tomorrow I have a bunch of test kits coming in.. Calcium, mag, all etc. all the stuff my tank uses and I don't track basically. Just been doing constant water changes on all my tanks and have seen a small amount of growth, but nothing major. Hopefully I can get a grasp on what my tank is using up and help the growth process along... What do you guys constantly monitor and what do you rarely or never worry about?
 
Ssteve said:
So tomorrow I have a bunch of test kits coming in.. Calcium, mag, all etc. all the stuff my tank uses and I don't track basically. Just been doing constant water changes on all my tanks and have seen a small amount of growth, but nothing major. Hopefully I can get a grasp on what my tank is using up and help the growth process along... What do you guys constantly monitor and what do you rarely or never worry about?
Click to expand...

PH but I'm thinking you have a probe. Just throwing it out there.

Constant: CAL and ALK
When dialing in every other day or every day. Once dialed in on dosing once a week or every two weeks if on top of it. Otherwise when the corals don't look so good.

Rarely: Mag maybe once a month? Or corals don't look good.

Rarely: Phosphates only when certain corals don't look good or fast increase of algae build up that's uncommon.

So for me I have all four as a go to and try to have a back up test kit of another brand just incase something baffles me. I use ELOS first and back up is Salifert.
 
^^ all of this except I test the big 2 parameters weekly. With a fast growing/high demand tank that your adding new coral to your dosing can change fairly quickly by small to large amounts either up or down. Only cal/alk is the really critical ones you usually need to proactively keep super stable. And you can't keep them stable without knowing that the mag is within the appropriate level so the first few weeks I'd test it to get a trend than Prob monthly if it's like my tank and really never moves.

I prefer to chart consumption over the course of a few days as long as it's not out of the ordinary dosing/wc schedule. I feel to avg the drop over 3 days is a little easier to chart and dial in an amount to dose.

I prefer to test weekly for alk/mag and p04 for sure.I track all of my levels in a notebook (trying to find an app that isn't crap or a rip off) to see trends in my tanks. I've been pretty much charting my tanks since 2003ish =) and so far it has helped me to remember things I notice off, unseen trends or new additions like fish etc.. Since my tank is relatively new I also check n03 weekly to mostly bi weekly because I feed super heavy and am still adjusting my carbon dosing on the tank. I prefer to use Hanna for alk/p04 and Salifert for everything else fwiw.
 
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Alk, ca and mag are the key items I check monthly.

As far as logging or tracking goes, being a software and web guy, I coded a website with a sql database for myself runs on my laptop (my laptop is a webserver and db server) that is capable of tracking all my reef events, such as test results, livestock acquisition, equipment changes, water changes and bulb replacement. And I could filter on the type of event and call up say just test results, or just water changes. Works well. Eventually just stopped using it.
 
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Thanks guys... I don't plan to get real crazy chasing numbers so I'm not overly concerned with nitrates and phosphates really, but I think I'll test cal, mag and alk frequently until I get a grasp of what the tank is consuming, and then test in between water changes which I plan to move to doing bi weekly instead of weekly or more often than weekly like I'm doing now.
 
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