Mike's 300 Double-D
- Thread starter prop-frags
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prop-frags
SPS Slave
OK OK - Sorry for the long delay here Wayne. Real Life has seriously gotten in the way of Online Life.
On the equipment front, the LED testing has been going very well. We've gotten the Apex programs ironed out just like we want for the Hydra 52 LED fixture in the middle section of the light rack. We very slowly ramped up the intensity to a point where we felt the corals had completely adjusted to the new lighting. There was some minor browning out during this, but we really wanted to err on the side of too little PAR vs. too much during the acclimation period. So based on this, we took the income tax refunds and applied them toward the next step in the lighting saga:
We will be replacing the remaining two MH fixtures with Hydra 52s. We also expect to be able to retire the VHOs and dawn/dusk stunner strips. We have already written the Apex scripts to take care of the full 24-hour light cycle, and of course with the new capabilities, we are planning to add some great new features such as cloud cover and the occasional thunder storm. We plan to construct the light rack mods to accommodate the Hydras next week, and we will post up some pics of the mods. :dance:
Speaking of acclimation, the newest addition to our livestock list is now in the acclimation box in the display tank, having gone through quite the rigorous QT period. We really wanted to fatten him up, expecting that there would be some serious harassment coming from the other angels in the display who are already well-established. Surprisingly, after the first couple of days, it has been the Regal who has shown the most aggression toward the C. flavissima. Thankfully, the Regal has calmed down over the last day, so we'll probably be releasing him into the tank this weekend.
so sounds like you will be going from 3 400 MH's & 4 vho's to just:
3 AI Hydra 52's?
You are running them longwise front to back?
So you feel each will cover a 24 x 36 section fine?
What % did you start and how much did you ramp and where are you at now?
Also how high are these guys from water and what optics are on them.
Thanks again for all the input and details!!! I am going to test LED's on my frag tank and see what happens then go from there
3 AI Hydra 52's?
You are running them longwise front to back?
So you feel each will cover a 24 x 36 section fine?
What % did you start and how much did you ramp and where are you at now?
Also how high are these guys from water and what optics are on them.
Thanks again for all the input and details!!! I am going to test LED's on my frag tank and see what happens then go from there
Just wondering what led you to make the lighting switch? Cost savings, heat issues or just curious about trying them? I recently setup a tank with the same dimensions and started with t5s until I decided which way to go. I just switched over to MH and am loving them so far. I would have liked to try leds but was concerned about investing such significant money in a technology that still seems to be evolving. Those hydra 52s had my interest. Ill be following along to see how they do for you over time.
prop-frags
SPS Slave
Nice addition guys!Soooo beautiful
I hope everything goes well with releasing him in the tank!
Thanks! There was some pretty serious aggression while she (yeah, we now think it's a female) was in the acclimation box, so we kept her in there for a few extra days. When released, the Regal was pretty crazy. After about a week, the new little girl is holding her own.
Correct. At this point, we are hoping that the 3 hydras will do the job. The orientation is side-to-side, like shown in post #1455. They are 11" from the water surface, with 80-degree optics. Once we get them mounted on the left and right, I think we'll have a better feel for the full front-to-back coverage. We don't have corals all the way to the back of the tank, so it should work out just fine.
As far as the ramp, as stated earlier, we have been very conservative. The overall started at 60% with UV at 35%. Joel at ATI was very helpful and advised us on how to work the ramp and the UV settings in particular. We currently are at 95% overall with 45% UV. That's probably about the max we'll go, and honestly the left and right probably won't go that high since corals are higher on the ends.
This is a great question! We have been on the sidelines for several years watching the LED industry grow and the technology evolve. We've been having great results with MH lighting, but for all the reasons you list, MH lighting isn't perfect. The real catalyst for us was a conversation we had at MACNA last summer with Dana Riddle. While he was impressed with our tank and results with MH, his insights about LED maturity and the ability to use lower PAR with targeted coloration is what really spurred our interest. His current research is about coral response to certain LEDs, their intensity, and wavelength, and the interaction of the zooxanthellae and photosynthesis. Bottom line is that we felt the time was right to make the switch from MH to LED's in the display.
We will keep you all posted on how the grand experiment goes.
____________________________
Now, how about some pics?
saladtime1 
saladtime2 
male_mbipartitus2 
mbipartitus_mf 
bellus 
hooded 
8line
prop-frags
SPS Slave
Thanks Mike, we appreciate the compliment! About the Bellus, as angels go, they really are pretty easy-going, and best of all, our Bellus' don't pluck any corals (unlike the other angels :twitch
So for the updates, we'll start off with some bad news. We have been doing a lot of work on the tank over the last few weeks; massive re-work of the left side and center rock work, tons of coral pruning and coral-scaping. Part of that work involved taking the tunze rock we have in the back and making some physical adjustments to it (trimmed off some of it's length). Horribly, the male Bellus angel swam up inside it and got jammed. We found him the next day and he was mortally injured. We both are just absolutely sick about it - he was such an amazing specimen, and being part of a mated pair, and well, there's just no words to say how awful we feel about this. Rest in peace, old friend. So we're on the search for another male Bellus, but that's a dim prospect - they are very hard to come by.
:headwallblue: If anyone knows of where we might find one, please let us know!As far as the tank goes, it's really changing. The corals were getting pretty massive and needing pruning, and so we're re-working it extensively. The new LED fixtures are now installed, and we are acclimating everything. The alkalinity continues to be a major pain in the you-know-what to keep dialed in. We had problems with the Kalk reactor (back-siphoning into the RO/DI vat), and the calcium reactor (bad solenoid on the CO2, check-valve failures, you name it), and all this along with the big changes in the coral colonies are making the alk swing like crazy. Happy corals do not result from such foolishness, we can assure you.
Anyway, lets start with the LEDs, as many of you are very interested in that topic! As we may have mentioned before, the retrofit of the AI Hydra 52 fixture into the existing light rack is a snap. We start off with some 1.5" angled aluminum from the neighborhood box store, then its simple to cut two 15" lengths with the chop saw and then file off the burrs:
Then the fixture just lays in there like a baby in a cradle. Here we were toying with the idea of having it oriented front to back in the light rack:
But we ended up putting them in with a side-to-side orientation:
Here's the light rack with the completed retrofit:
The next thing we've added recently is an Algae turf scrubber. We have been using refugia for years and years, and decided to give this a try in addition to the refugium. Terry picked up the floating scrubber from Santa Monica Filtration. It's a pretty slick design with a self-contained box with waterproof LEDs in the lid, and the thing floats in the sump:
We got the jumbo sized unit since we love to feed our fish so much
We'll keep you guys posted on how well it performs.
Thanks for watching and stay tuned for some tank shots. Terry has been busy with some school projects for the little one lately and needs to get the camera pointed at the fish tank. :artist:
It's been a busy 36 hours here and we're exhausted, but the new frag tank is IN and it is HOTTT!!!
Here's a pic taken by the tank builders before delivery:
We'll post up a couple of pics of the install in the morning, so stay tuned!
What are the dimension of your frag tank? Nice build and I never thought of putting quartz around a aquarium like you did. It turned out really nice.
jacky.l
Jacky
OK OK - Sorry for the long delay here Wayne. Real Life has seriously gotten in the way of Online Life.
On the equipment front, the LED testing has been going very well. We've gotten the Apex programs ironed out just like we want for the Hydra 52 LED fixture in the middle section of the light rack. We very slowly ramped up the intensity to a point where we felt the corals had completely adjusted to the new lighting. There was some minor browning out during this, but we really wanted to err on the side of too little PAR vs. too much during the acclimation period. So based on this, we took the income tax refunds and applied them toward the next step in the lighting saga:
We will be replacing the remaining two MH fixtures with Hydra 52s. We also expect to be able to retire the VHOs and dawn/dusk stunner strips. We have already written the Apex scripts to take care of the full 24-hour light cycle, and of course with the new capabilities, we are planning to add some great new features such as cloud cover and the occasional thunder storm. We plan to construct the light rack mods to accommodate the Hydras next week, and we will post up some pics of the mods. :dance:
Speaking of acclimation, the newest addition to our livestock list is now in the acclimation box in the display tank, having gone through quite the rigorous QT period. We really wanted to fatten him up, expecting that there would be some serious harassment coming from the other angels in the display who are already well-established. Surprisingly, after the first couple of days, it has been the Regal who has shown the most aggression toward the C. flavissima. Thankfully, the Regal has calmed down over the last day, so we'll probably be releasing him into the tank this weekend.
Looking forward to your LED feeding effect, I have been on LED is very interested in, plans by the end of this year to use LED.
are you getting decent light spread front to back with them sitting that way? Or are you keeping some VHO's.
I tried a full spectrum fixture like reefbreeders over a frag tank that is 30" deep(front to back), have the lights 16" above water and have mix of 90* & 120* optics and still have quick fall off of PAR and can tell the edges are a bit dimmer.
Also do you notice them to be a bit less bright compared to the MH's & VHO?
mine seem quite dim just compared to 2 250w MH's
I tried a full spectrum fixture like reefbreeders over a frag tank that is 30" deep(front to back), have the lights 16" above water and have mix of 90* & 120* optics and still have quick fall off of PAR and can tell the edges are a bit dimmer.
Also do you notice them to be a bit less bright compared to the MH's & VHO?
mine seem quite dim just compared to 2 250w MH's
Sorry to here about the bellus. Ive been looking for a male for my female but they dont seem to come around that often. Have you considered adding another female and hoping for one to transition? Ive thought about it but wondered how the original would react to the newcomer.
prop-frags
SPS Slave
Thank You, Dave!
Thank You! We have been very happy with the quartz counter tops and love that they are maintenance free. The dimensions of our frag tank are: 48"Lx24"Dx12"H.
We will continue to post updates on our LED transition. Best of luck to you on your future LED upgrade.
Our fixtures sit approx 10" above the water line. We are getting decent coverage in their current orientation because we have approx 8 to 9" of open space between our rock work and the back wall (left and right sections) and because our overflow box takes up quite a bit of space in the center section of the tank.
The (2) VHO's are temporarily running during our peak lighting period (5 to 10 PM) while the left and right fixtures are running in acclimation mode). We'll make a decision on whether to run them during that time frame after acclimation is complete.
The Hydra 52's running at full power are very intense. Comparing them to MH's is a bit difficult as the light produced by them is different. MH's have a more uniform full spectrum look and appear more intense to our eyes, where as full spectrum LED fixtures are made up of several different spectra that are then "blended" using optics. The overall effect appears to be less intense.
Our Hydra 52's look brighter than 250w MH's - somewhere between them and 400w MH's. Running them at 95% w/our (2) VHO's looks very close to the intensity of our old 400w MH fixtures running 20,000k Ushio bulbs.
While on the subject of LED intensity and full spectrum blending, in our humble opinion, the Kessil 360 does a superior job of this. Almost too good as the shimmer effect can get intense and almost strobe like. The drawback (for us) with the Kessil was the amount of coverage - we would have had to buy 6 pendants for the amount of coverage we needed.
We may eventually decide to add a Kessil 360 to the left and right sections of the tank. We'll see.
Dave, there are some GREAT videos on youtube where you can see this ingenious gadget in action - just search Santa Monica Filtration SURF 4.
The purpose of the strings is to give algae a surface to attach to and start growing. Once algae takes hold on the string material, it will spread to the lining of the box and grow up around the sides as well. The clear tubing is air line tubing and connects to an air pump - this model has 4 air line feeds located at the bottom four corners of the box. Air is fed into the box and produces a ton of bubbles. The waterproof top of the box contains 2 sets of red LED lights that are sealed behind plexiglass. When the top is on, the box is virtually silent. The air bubbles stay contained within the box and air is vented out through holes located on the sides above the water line.
Here's a pic of the box floating in our sump:
We will post an update on the scrubber once we have our first harvest.
Thank you, Mike! Adding a female or two should not be too much of an issue, especially with an acclimation box. We may add a female or two, but are really hoping to find a nice size male as Genicanthus angelfish tend to stay or revert to female when other larger or more dominant Angelfish species are present in a tank.
Thank You, Brett! He is sorely missed!Sorry about the Bellus M&T, he was a beauty for sure
Sorry the flavissima did not work out for you.
We did our homework and understood what we were getting into before purchasing. We also keep several other fish that most folks would consider "risky" including a Flame Angel, Tinker's Butterfly, Regal Angelfish, and a Tomentosus Filefish.
Last edited:
pookstreet
Registered Stick Killer
Looking beautiful as always, M & T! I would also be interested in seeing how the Turf 4 work out for you guys as I am contemplating getting one myself. Anything to make the system better.
prop-frags
SPS Slave
Your welcome, Dave!
Thanks so much Kenny! Yes, anything that makes the system better is a Good Thing!
We took a peak inside the box yesterday and were excited to see algae already forming on the strings and inside surface of the box. We then plugged in the second set of LED's. Hopefully, the additional lighting will increase growth.
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