wesleyforbes2
New member
Thanks, that's good to know!
Kessil A360WE
- Thread starter bif24701
- Start date
Thanks, that's good to know!
wesleyforbes2
New member
Unfortunately, there is no room for both.
wesleyforbes2
New member
My buddy helped me out with the firmware update as well as linking it to the Fusion website! So far so good!
wesleyforbes2
New member
From what I heard, Neptune systems is coming out with a newer way to program the Kessils that is even easier than adding 4 different profiles and still needing to add instructions for each. Is this true?
slief
RC Sponsor
They already did. It's called Fusion and it makes programming the Kessils a breeze. Just adjust a pair of graphs to control the color and intesnisty. It creates the profiles automatically and takes minutes to setup.
Can someone suggest a mounting height and intensity for my aquarium? It's 30x30x24, with 23" of water and a 1" sand bed (so about 22" of water). I'm going to try and run just one A360WE over this tank; my aquascape fits into 24x24 at the bottom with sand around the outside. I plan on mostly LPS with a few acros or montis about 6" or less below the surface. I'd like as little light spill as possible, but I assume this shouldn't be much of a concern with the 30x30 footprint. The only concern I have is I'd like to keep a clam on the sandbed, but directly under the centre of the light.
Suggestions?
Suggestions?
slief
RC Sponsor
I'm not sure anybody can really tell you the height and intensity for your tank. You will need to setup the light and raise or lower it until you get adequate spread that covers your aquascape without lighting up the glass to much.
As far as intensity, again, you will want to start low. How low really depends on what kind of lighting you are running now. For me, I was running LED's prior to my switch to Kessils. I first took par readings of my existing lights, then color matched the kessils over half my tank to my original LED's. From there, I took par readings of the Kessils and then adjusted the intensity to be lower than my existing lighting. After a week, I raised the intensity a bit a repeated the following week until I hit about 75%. Key is to watch your corals and tank. If you are seeing to much nuisance algae or the corals are receding or bleaching you will need to back off on the intensity.
That's the thing, I don't have any current lighting, and the only inhabitants at this point are fish. New start with dry rock, two misbar clowns and a banggai just went in after a 4 week cycle. I'm just looking for some guidelines to start with. Should I fully stock the tank before ramping up intensity? Where should I start? And I suppose the mounting height will probably also solve itself, just based on light spill.
markster33139
New member
As slief said before you should at least buy/borrow a par meter so that you can determine some basic par numbers at different intensities for when you do get corals in the future. You can then use those numbers as a guide to help you place them later on.
wesleyforbes2
New member
YES, AWESOME! I now am on Fusion and am just waiting for the lights and VDM module to come in. Once I hook the VDM up to my Apex Lite, and the lights up to the VDM, the graphs for color and intensity should just show up right?
Also, I know that you go to a ton of shows and frag swaps, but I actually met you and Jim Stime (LA Fish Guy) about a year ago down in Ventura County at a frag swap.
slief
RC Sponsor
Once you add the VDM, you will see 4 addition variable speed ports in the configuration menu. If you attach the VDM cable into port 1/2 on the VDM module and the other end to the Kessil. The first of the ports in the Fusion setup menu will be Color and the second will be intensity.
This is a snap shot of my graphs after initial setup. The blue line is color and the orange line is intensity. You can add points to the graph, you can drag it or you can edit the values of each point by clicking on the gear icons in lower lines below the graph and modifying the values.
How accurate are the numbers really tho? I've read you can add up to 40% to numbers on the blue end, and 10% on the white end... Is this correct? Also apparently the angle you hold the sensor at makes a huge difference... For a maxima on the sandbed, I should be shooting for 150+ PAR, correct?
wesleyforbes2
New member
Once you add the VDM, you will see 4 addition variable speed ports in the configuration menu. If you attach the VDM cable into port 1/2 on the VDM module and the other end to the Kessil. The first of the ports in the Fusion setup menu will be Color and the second will be intensity.
This is a snap shot of my graphs after initial setup. The blue line is color and the orange line is intensity. You can add points to the graph, you can drag it or you can edit the values of each point by clicking on the gear icons in lower lines below the graph and modifying the values.
OMG! If this is what I think it is, this looks so much easier than what I have been reading! I wonder why when I looked this up and did searches, it says that you have to enter like 4-6 profiles, then write programming commands using these profiles. I printed out all kinds of examples just to get me on the right track.
So just to be clear, do I still have to do all of that?
slief
RC Sponsor
This is what you think it is. If you are using the standard Apex web interface, you would have to create the individual profiles for sunrise, daytime, sunset, etc for both color and intensity. Fusion eliminates the need of creating profiles. The graphs and their points create the profiles for you and do so based on time and percentage automatically.. You set the value you want at each point and it creates the ramp up and ramp down. If you want more points, you go to the lines below the graph and click the gear on the left and select "Add Point". An additional point will be created between that one and the next one down. You can adjust the points by dragging them on the graph or go to the lines down below, click the gear and select "Edit" and type in what ever percentage and time you want. Once you have your graph setup for Color, you upload to Apex and repeat the process for intensity or you can do this from a single graph with both color and intensity on the same graph as show above. You get both graphs on the same page by using the compare option which is on the top right of the page. Then you can click on the blue or the orange graph points and adjust either color or intensity. It didn't take any reading to figure it out. I just kind of dumb thumbed my way through the interface and figured it out on my own. It's very intuitive.
While I am very proficient at creating profiles and really didn't figure I would ever need or want to use fusion, I was wrong. Fusion made the task a couple minute process. The only thing I had to determine was the color I liked and my ramp points for both color and intensity. Frankly, it made the programming process stupidly simple. I've been running neptune controllers since their very first generation Aqua Controller some 20 years ago and I have to say that Fusion is arguably the biggest advancement for a Neptune Controller since their debut. I absolutely love my Apex and couldn't imagine keeping my tank without it but Fusion coupled with the Apex makes an already great controller better by leaps and bounds. Especially for somebody without Apex programming experience.
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wesleyforbes2
New member
That's me! The person with no programming experience. Now, I just have to wait until my VDM and lights to get here and I'm set!
One more question in terms of setting up the points for color. As it shows in your screen shot, the percentage that is related to the time of day. Are you able to immediately see what color you have set and easily adjust it until you get the right color, save it, then move on to the next point? Also, is there a way to run the program you just set in like 30 seconds so you can see what it all looks like?
I'm super excited!
slief
RC Sponsor
Yes, once you adjust the color or intensity and send it to Apex, the color and intensity will change momentarily there after.
There is a playback feature that will run through the entire 24 hour program. Once you have the graph completed and sent to Apex, you hit the "Play" icon and it will play through the program really fast. While it does work, it goes so fast that the ramp up and down doesn't really give you a great idea of what the ramp will like under normal circumstances. As such, I didn't find that feature terribly useful. Essentially it takes my 12 hour light cycle and plays it back in 12 seconds or less so a 1-2 hour ramp is really too fast in playback mode to get a good idea of what it will look like.
I am not sure if you have a full Apex or not but if you have a full Apex and are not using the built in VDM ports, you really don't need the VDM module to control the Kessils. You can do it from the Apex VDM ports. Only difference that I am aware of is that the VDM supports weather effects such as clouds. Other than that, everything else should work the same via the base units Variable Speed Ports. All you need is the Kessil cable to connect to them which is the same as the cable used with the VDM module. In my case, my variable speed ports were in use controlling my Tunze Streams so I needed a VDM module for my Kessils.
wesleyforbes2
New member
Thank you, you have provided me with great information and have relieved me of the programming stress I was feeling before! :dance:
I have an Apex Lite so I don't have the built-in variable ports. I may use the cloud cover just to give the corals a break from having full daytime lighting constantly throughout the daytime lighting period. :fun4:
I saw your video on Youtube and the tank is looking great. There seems to be a ton of coralline algae growing!
slief
RC Sponsor
Glad to help! Yes, my coraline growth, especially on my glass is border line out of control and I don't dose a thing either. It's pretty tough to keep under control and I really need to get in and do some serious scraping with my algae dozer pads. That said, my rocks have litterally grown inches over the years.
As for clouds, as of this moment there is no way to implement clouds or weather feature with Kessils via Fusion. I suspect that is in the works. You would have to create profiles for that. The only concern I would have is that Fusion creates weird lines of code for the profiles unlike the code you would normally write through the native Apex interface. As such, I'm not sure how that would be implemented in conjunction with the Fusion code. Truth is, I am sure it would be simple but I just haven't bothered to check. If nothing else, you could start a thread in the lightin or Fusion section at the Neptune forum at neptunesystems.com
Edit: I went and posed the question on the Neptune forum about adding weather profiles to Fusion generated Kessil programming as I was curious myself.
Here is a link to the thread.
http://forum.neptunesystems.com/sho...rough-Fusion-Can-it-be-done&p=52378#post52378
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moondoggy4
Team RC
yuma's
yuma's
Yuma's grow well in my tank I am using a 6 bulb tek elite, you can watch the yuma's to see how they like the light, they will move if it is too intense but when they do they leave a bit of a foot a baby so to speak and another one will grow there as well, so if you aim the led at them and turn them up for a couple of hours you can make them move and give you more babies.
yuma's
Yuma's grow well in my tank I am using a 6 bulb tek elite, you can watch the yuma's to see how they like the light, they will move if it is too intense but when they do they leave a bit of a foot a baby so to speak and another one will grow there as well, so if you aim the led at them and turn them up for a couple of hours you can make them move and give you more babies.
firemountain
New member
Awesome... Thanks for the info!! I will definitely keep my eye on them to see how they respond. I didn't know they would respond that quickly to that type of lighting intensity change.
Maybe I will pick up a used Kessil 150 in the future to temporarily mount and shoot the area under the alcove, getting them to move. After seeing the YUMAS and the WWC BOUNCE mushrooms, I am partial and don't want any other type of mushrooms in my DT.
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