March 2015 Tank of the Month!!!

Good lord.. just ate a half bag of potato chips and didn't even taste 'em! Stellar performance sir!
 
As someone who is fortunate enough to live near Elliott, I can only tell you that as good as the photos are, the tank is 10X better in person. It is a work of art and genius.
 
Stolireef said:
As someone who is fortunate enough to live near Elliott, I can only tell you that as good as the photos are, the tank is 10X better in person. It is a work of art and genius.
Click to expand...


thanks buddy, I appreciate your kind words

best part of this hobby is meeting great people like you :beer:
 
Congrats on your TOM ....Very impressive.
I'm interested in changing over to LED's but have a few questions.
I have a 96" x 36" x 24" deep reef that I want to delete my 4 - 400 watt Metal halides & replace with AI SOL lighting system. I ultimately want to keep SPS corals. Here is my list of questions:
How many units will I need:
How often will I need to replace the LED's themselves
What is an estimated energy savings

I'm trying to figure out investment vs pay off with electric bill and replacement of metal halide bulbs 1 time per year
Thank you, and Congratulations again... Beautiful system...Job well done.
 
GlassShark said:
Congrats on your TOM ....Very impressive.
I'm interested in changing over to LED's but have a few questions.
I have a 96" x 36" x 24" deep reef that I want to delete my 4 - 400 watt Metal halides & replace with AI SOL lighting system. I ultimately want to keep SPS corals. Here is my list of questions:
How many units will I need:
How often will I need to replace the LED's themselves
What is an estimated energy savings

I'm trying to figure out investment vs pay off with electric bill and replacement of metal halide bulbs 1 time per year
Thank you, and Congratulations again... Beautiful system...Job well done.
Click to expand...

many thanks GlassShark, I appreciate your comments

remember you only need light where there is coral, so the number of light fixtures depends on your aquascape, my tank for example is intentionally darkened over the entire back 12"

however considering you were to light the entire tank and have enough light to grow SPS, I would think 8-10 AI sol blue fixtures would be adequate.

LEDs reportedly last a long time, around 50,000 hrs, so we are talking about 10-11 years! the other advantage over incandescent bulbs is that you are not having to replace bulbs every six months, so there is less possibility of variance in light intensity

energy savings are substantial, AI sol blue's draw 75 watts compared to your 400 watt metal halides, however there are other savings if you are having to cool your tank due to the heat generated from the halides, and of course the ongoing replacement costs of the halide bulbs

savings to consider...

electrical draw: AI's x 10 = 750W vs MH x 4 = 1600W
MH bulb replacement costs every 6 months
expense to cool tank from heat generated from MH's
 
appreciate the detail in your blog thank you ...also i love seeing you buff the acrylic !!!!!!i too have a large gallon 500 acrylic reef and have a hard time worrying about scratches and being super ocd with cleaning i may copy you in the future here with the buffer i do all scratch repair inside tank by hand and it sucks thanks again love that clip as well
 
ADA33 said:
Congrats
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thank you ADA33!

supervdl said:
Nice tank congratulations!!
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many thanks supervdl!

BrentH said:
appreciate the detail in your blog thank you ...also i love seeing you buff the acrylic !!!!!!i too have a large gallon 500 acrylic reef and have a hard time worrying about scratches and being super ocd with cleaning i may copy you in the future here with the buffer i do all scratch repair inside tank by hand and it sucks thanks again love that clip as well
Click to expand...

thanks BrentH! After hand buffing one of the QT tanks I decided it was time for a better solution, which led me to the technique on the video, the details of which can be found on my build thread, page 6, post 137 http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2229215&highlight=elliott&page=6
 
Salinity/Topoff?

Salinity/Topoff?

Very very cool system!

Can you explain more about how you control the wet skimming/water change and RO/DI topoff? How does the system know how much salt water versus RO/DI to add back?

thanks
scott
 
entropygain said:
Very very cool system!

Can you explain more about how you control the wet skimming/water change and RO/DI topoff? How does the system know how much salt water versus RO/DI to add back?

thanks
scott
Click to expand...

thanks Scott, much appreciated

The skimmers are set to overproduce skimmate and as the skimmate is removed from the system there is a float switch in a sump that replenishes that volume loss from a 300g seawater reservoir, essentially replacing the dirty skimmate water with clean water. Actually, just the large RK2 25PE skimmer is set to skim wet, the other 2 Barr 5220's are set to skim rather dry, with the intention of removing different types of organics.

Evaporative loss is estimated to be 8-10g per day and that volume is simply pumped into the system over a 24 hr period from a 300g RO/DI reservoir. I increase or decrease the amount as needed, depending on the ongoing salinity. Surprisingly, probably due to the larger volume, it has required very little adjustment over the 2 1/2 years.
 
Amazing tank! Thanks for providing all the detail. I can't see any of the videos though, they all just error and won't link back to youtube. Do you have the links handy so I can watch?
 
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