Kessil Club

I am in the slow process of upgrading to a 230 gallon tank from my current 150 cube. I currently have one kessil 350w over my 36x36x26 cube and it lights the tank ok, but has lots of dark shadow spots. It is ok for now but the new tank I want to be able to put corals wherever I choose. The new tanks dimensions are 72x24x31. How many kessils would you guys recommend. Due to the dual glass braces I am thinking 3 would fit great but want to be able to grow all types of corals. One question I have is the depth at 31" worries me a little. Anyone using them with such depth? Also, what is the difference in the 360's and the one I currently have?
 
Love my Kessil's!! But took 5 at 100% to replace 2x250 and 1x400w MH. I would say they appear close to mh briteness.
 

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sethd12 said:
I am in the slow process of upgrading to a 230 gallon tank from my current 150 cube. I currently have one kessil 350w over my 36x36x26 cube and it lights the tank ok, but has lots of dark shadow spots. It is ok for now but the new tank I want to be able to put corals wherever I choose. The new tanks dimensions are 72x24x31. How many kessils would you guys recommend. Due to the dual glass braces I am thinking 3 would fit great but want to be able to grow all types of corals. One question I have is the depth at 31" worries me a little. Anyone using them with such depth? Also, what is the difference in the 360's and the one I currently have?
Click to expand...

I have 5 on my 72" 180 and it's just right but I'd like to add 1 more to make it perfect.
 
I am going to try and explain a couple of topics the best I can with the info I have learned from reading different articles and what ever else so take it for what it worth.
PAR and PUR from what I have read and understand PAR is a useless way of test light out put for lighting that we use for Reef Tanks, because it measure light intensity in our visual spectrum, in other words light we see. Par reads pretty much from 350nm to 750nm so PAR is a general use to show the efficiency of a light source. Wow this is a tough one to put into words. PUR is" more by definition the fraction of photo synthetically available radiant of energy of such wavelengths that it can be absorbed by algal and plant pigments" now there something to ponder over. There is a Video on YouTube that show this well, I believe. The person was measuring par under some Kessil lights and was getting poor reading and said good buy to the Kessil"s and put a new LED light on I believe it was called a Hallo. Of coarse he got great PAR readings with this unit because the light had all different colours that are all at about the same intensity. Its like back in the day with 20K MH bulbs and guys would install them and then take a PAR reading and say my PAR is way down I don't understand its the same Wattage. Then people would tell him yes the 20K bulbs are not vary efficient and you have to upgrade to 400 from the 250 and in a week or two he is back asking why are my Corals bleaching. Oh it must be the shock of going from 10K to the 20K give it some time and after buying more corals and watching them fade away becomes frustrated and goes back to what worked for him before 10K 250 Watt, does this sound familiar to some of the old timers. Now this is where I believe Kessil may have done some research on vary specific wavelengths and intensity that algae in corals use and that's where their statement comes in. " Constant intensity across the spectrum" I take that as I change the colour of the light the low end of the Spectrum stays the same, which would be the chart display the show on their site. Anyhow my mind starting to wonder so I hope this maybe of some help to someone and this is just my thoughts and many more that I did not mention about this PAR and PUR thing.

All the best.

Skim
 
There's always a lot of argument about amount of light whether PAR/PUR etc. and I agree with most. Where I disagree is where people say LED just looks like less light. Lets just say when I went to Kessil from MH/T5 there was noticeably less brightness and significant shadowing. So I went to 5 lights and happier with the result. The tank looks brighter and there is less shadowing. If someone has never experienced MH and goes from just CFL/T5 or some cheap LED fixture to Kessil it is easy to say that its so much light.

But in any case there appears to be less light which is subjective. My SPS and other stuff are doing well and still growing but there's one clear indicator.

I have 4 rose bubble tip anemones (known to love high intensity MH) and they don't seem to really like the light and are IMO an indication of less light intensity. Compared to life under 14k MH/T5 they are much more stringy, elongated and less bubbled reaching for light. In fact one that was on the bottom of tank actually picked up and moved about 10" higher to get closer to the light. After original placement none have ever moved before.

Not anything that will make me toss the Kessil's and go back to MH but its of note. Now if my SPS were to start declining the lights would be out the door in a heartbeat.
 
Newbie Aquarist said:
It won't be wasteful. If you think that it will you could always lower the light. Just trying to get you more bang for your buck.
Click to expand...

Thanks and good point.

Moved it up to 10" off the water not that I'd expect it will change much. A gentle ramp up/down in the light cycle would be nice. How about those kessil controllers- might have to purchase one?

Anyone else have any coral reference points as per my previous post?
 
zoomonster said:
There's always a lot of argument about amount of light whether PAR/PUR etc. and I agree with most. Where I disagree is where people say LED just looks like less light. Lets just say when I went to Kessil from MH/T5 there was noticeably less brightness and significant shadowing. So I went to 5 lights and happier with the result. The tank looks brighter and there is less shadowing. If someone has never experienced MH and goes from just CFL/T5 or some cheap LED fixture to Kessil it is easy to say that its so much light.

But in any case there appears to be less light which is subjective. My SPS and other stuff are doing well and still growing but there's one clear indicator.

I have 4 rose bubble tip anemones (known to love high intensity MH) and they don't seem to really like the light and are IMO an indication of less light intensity. Compared to life under 14k MH/T5 they are much more stringy, elongated and less bubbled reaching for light. In fact one that was on the bottom of tank actually picked up and moved about 10" higher to get closer to the light. After original placement none have ever moved before.

Not anything that will make me toss the Kessil's and go back to MH but its of note. Now if my SPS were to start declining the lights would be out the door in a heartbeat.
Click to expand...

This is the kind of experience/ obsevation that can be usefull info. Anenomes moving and such.
 
4corners said:
Thanks and good point.

Moved it up to 10" off the water not that I'd expect it will change much. A gentle ramp up/down in the light cycle would be nice. How about those kessil controllers- might have to purchase one?

Anyone else have any coral reference points as per my previous post?
Click to expand...

Get the controller, you wont look back. :hammer:
 
Scorpius said:
Get the controller, you wont look back. :hammer:
Click to expand...

I used the controller for a while and it works great to simulate a gentle sun rise and sunset (well it would if you could smoothly dim the W360 all the way down to 0 :headwally:).

By now it's back in its box and collecting dust because I moved up to an APEX which allows for more control like for example seasonal variations.
 
ThRoewer said:
I used the controller for a while and it works great to simulate a gentle sun rise and sunset (well it would if you could smoothly dim the W360 all the way down to 0 :headwally:).



By now it's back in its box and collecting dust because I moved up to an APEX which allows for more control like for example seasonal variations.
Click to expand...


How are you doing seasonal variations with the apex?

All I could could program with my apex was simple sunrise and sunset.
 
oseymour said:
How are you doing seasonal variations with the apex?

All I could could program with my apex was simple sunrise and sunset.
Click to expand...

You'll have to dig a little deeper but here's a simple example of using season tables. This was for my old moonlight and for apex. So as far as I know Sun would be your key to season tables. I don't use them for daylight because I want the tank on my schedule.

Set OFF
If Moon 000/000 Then ON
If Sun 000/000 Then OFF
 
im happy to say im a kessil owner now :)

I'm just looking for a mount that I like. I'm just looking for something clean and simple and I think I'm leaning towards a Lerusso design slim lin kessil mount.

How anyone ever used one? What's the verdict on those mounts? are they durable and sturdy or should I look at another one?
 
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