My 47G Rimless T5/LED Hybrid SPS Tank
- Thread starter sahin
- Start date
sahin
Ultimate Reefer
Have got a few more things done now. I have setup the Fan Cooling system. I used a double fan unit from a broken Xbox unit, bits from an Azoo cooling unit and rigged up a pretty high performance fan cooling system
Once I take my nanocube down, I will install the TC-10 temperature controller to activate the fan cooling system at preset values.
My living room is always hot; normally 26-27 degrees, and my nano cube needs to be cooled throughout the day or else it will heat up beyond 27'C. Fortunately, I have found that the 47G Rimless runs at 26'C with the large return pump and the large protein skimmer pump. So with the fan cooling system I made, it will be easy to maintain a reasonable tank temperature.
I have also added sand into the tank. It is Caribsea Aragonite sand, the grain size is very fine to 1.5mm, and a handful of larger 5mm bits. I also mixed in a few large cups of larger grain sand, so that I am able to have lots of flow in the tank without the sand being blown around.
I have also started to dose the tank with bacteria (Zeovit + MB7) and a carbon food source to kick start the biological process. This is my 4th reef tank; on my last reef tank I dosed bacteria and a carbon source and found that algae problems are pretty much non existant when utilising this method.
I will start to dose Vodka and a few drops of MB7 or Zeobac on a weekly basis thereafter.
Thanks.
Once I take my nanocube down, I will install the TC-10 temperature controller to activate the fan cooling system at preset values.
My living room is always hot; normally 26-27 degrees, and my nano cube needs to be cooled throughout the day or else it will heat up beyond 27'C. Fortunately, I have found that the 47G Rimless runs at 26'C with the large return pump and the large protein skimmer pump. So with the fan cooling system I made, it will be easy to maintain a reasonable tank temperature.
I have also added sand into the tank. It is Caribsea Aragonite sand, the grain size is very fine to 1.5mm, and a handful of larger 5mm bits. I also mixed in a few large cups of larger grain sand, so that I am able to have lots of flow in the tank without the sand being blown around.
I have also started to dose the tank with bacteria (Zeovit + MB7) and a carbon food source to kick start the biological process. This is my 4th reef tank; on my last reef tank I dosed bacteria and a carbon source and found that algae problems are pretty much non existant when utilising this method.
I will start to dose Vodka and a few drops of MB7 or Zeobac on a weekly basis thereafter.
Thanks.
Im going to be following along! I really like how you modded the ATI SunPower... Its making me have thoughts of modding mine. All I can say is I think you have a great idea! Pictures would be awesome.
Did you have to add another ballast or are you using the standard ballast? Also is it adding the shimmer that LEDs add? Thats the only reason I want to add LEDs to my Sunpower, otherwise Im very happy with the sunpower.
Did you have to add another ballast or are you using the standard ballast? Also is it adding the shimmer that LEDs add? Thats the only reason I want to add LEDs to my Sunpower, otherwise Im very happy with the sunpower.
sahin
Ultimate Reefer
Thanks.
I did have to add another ballast. the Sunpower 6x24w has 3 ballast that run two tubes. Hence I needed to replace a double ballast with a single ballast. Easily done. I then rewired every single T5 tube so now, tubes 1,4+6 light up together, and 2+5 light up together.
Here is the final bulb configuration:
From Front:
ATI Blue+
Arcdia 14K
24 Cree Royal Blue LED's
KZ Fiji Purple
ATI AquaBlue Special
ATI Blue+
There is only a SLIGHT shimmer with the T5's on. IF you are wanting MH like shimmer then this is not the way. I love this light and dont miss my MH shimmer. In fact I had the lights switched on for both this tank and my nano tank which has MH.
I can say that I 100% prefer the look of T5+LED with slight shimmer, more than MH.
I was out for a few hours and thought I'd test how low the water temp can be pulled down by the Custom Fan Cooling System I built. Well after 4 hours the temp is from 82'F to 71'F. That is a whopping 11'F temp drop using only fans. The room temp during this time was 77'F. So the cooling system is so efficient it can drop the temp upto 6'F below the room temp. I will be running the tanks temp at around 79'Fn in any event. I am sure that with the two small fans and the lighting system I have, the tank will never over heat.
Because my living room is ALWAYS warmer than 75'F, I am NOT using a heater in this tank. My heater was never used on my nano tank and I see no point in having one in this tank.
Really pleased with this build. I just hope I get to buy some really nice SPS corals and they colour up nicely.
I have placed an order for a Fauna Marine Triple Doser. With the doser, temp controller+fans and the Tunze Osmolator the water chemistry should be rock steady; hence I am hoping the SPS colours ought to be very good.
is the led ballast in the sunpower housing? is there enough room i mean? if so im thinking of adding a 24 bulb kit to my 36" sunpower. did you put the t5. reflectors back in?
ive even thought of going all led for the customization of intensity but i love my sunpower and the look that t5s give the corals. can you make a video showing the slight shimmer plz? and or take par readings. that would more than likely convince me to mod mine too.
i think you started something here!
ive even thought of going all led for the customization of intensity but i love my sunpower and the look that t5s give the corals. can you make a video showing the slight shimmer plz? and or take par readings. that would more than likely convince me to mod mine too.
i think you started something here!
sahin
Ultimate Reefer
Looking great! It's nice to see a fellow Muslim reefer.
I'll have to pm you a few questions about the leds.
Sonny
Alhamdullillah! Man, I would have never guessed you were Muslim too. :lol2:
PM me with any questions you have about the LED's.
Here is a cool photo I just took to show off the T5/LED Hybrid reflection off the water:
Man, I wish the parts from China would get here quicker! I can only run the LED's for a couple of minutes at the moment as I havent heatsinked and installed sufficient fans yet.
Once finished, I think my corals ought to love this light. :bounce3:
sahin
Ultimate Reefer
No, the LED ballasts are externally mounted. They give off quite bit of heat. Its hard enough removing heat from the LED's inside that limited space of the Sunpower, so you wouldnt want to add more heat in there. Besides, the Meanwell drivers are too big to fit inside the internals of the Sunpower.
I put the reflectors back in for the 5 remaining T5 tubes. If you were to remove the reflectors that would be severely counter productive.
I dont have a camera to take a recording of the shimmer unfortunately. I'll see later, if my iphone 4 will be able to pickup the shimmer etc.
I dont have access to a PAR. Though I have asked a fellow UK reefer to borrow me his PAR meter.
sahin
Ultimate Reefer
Quick update:
The tank had a shallow sand bed put in about 5 days ago. I seeded the sand with Zeobac and MB7 as well as placing a few rocks from my nano tank. Today I put in a few hermits and a couple of snails to see how they do. I dont expect this tank to have any Ammonia spike or anything like that at all, because I used live sand in addition to seeding with the Zeobac and MB7 and live rock. All the rocks are coming from my nano tank.
The tank is progressing well. I expect to have all the rocks transfered and aquascaped within two weeks. Still waiting for parts to arrive from China to complete my LED mod to my ATI Sunpower
Wish it got here by now...
The tank had a shallow sand bed put in about 5 days ago. I seeded the sand with Zeobac and MB7 as well as placing a few rocks from my nano tank. Today I put in a few hermits and a couple of snails to see how they do. I dont expect this tank to have any Ammonia spike or anything like that at all, because I used live sand in addition to seeding with the Zeobac and MB7 and live rock. All the rocks are coming from my nano tank.
The tank is progressing well. I expect to have all the rocks transfered and aquascaped within two weeks. Still waiting for parts to arrive from China to complete my LED mod to my ATI Sunpower
Wish it got here by now...
bermocrf250
New member
cool looking tank mate
sahin
Ultimate Reefer
Thanks.cool looking tank mate
Dominic, if you can, add two strips of Cree Royal Blue LED's. Its easy to DIY. You will have two less tubes to replace each year and the Royal Blue LED's flouresce certain corals almost in a metallic looking way - even the ATi Blue+ tubes cannot do this.
Also, when all the T5 tubes are off you will have lots of shimmer. Good luck with your new build.
sahin
Ultimate Reefer
Had several PM's asking about the LED mod:
Basically I mounted the LED's onto an Aluminium plate. You cannot mount them directly onto the Sunpowers metal chassis as the heat conductivity through that material is only about 3/20 of Aluminium.
I had to cut a rectangle out from the Sunpower using a Dremmel with slim cutting wheels.
Once this was done, I screwed and thermal glued the Aluminium plate onto the chassis of the Sunpower.
The plate and chassis on their own wont disperse the heat. I tested and within 5 minutes the plate was getting very very warm to the touch.
So I ordered 4 VGA graphics card fans and found a few other bits of low profile heatsinks lying around. All I had to do then was glue them down with thermal paste.
I had to upgrade the AC to DC adaptor that runs the two ATI Sunpower fans as I wanted to run the VGA fans off the same power supply. I could have gone with a seperate powersupply but that meant another couple of wires going into the unit somehow...couldnt be arsed with that.
I then wired everything up and here are a few shots:
1. This shows the LED's mounted onto a secondary surface, ie the Aluminium plate:
2. Here I was playing around with the placement of the fans and heatsinks. Not very pretty, but it will do the job.
3. Final shot showing all the lights on at the same time:
The White balance is screwed up and I didnt bother to take custom white balance readings with my DSLR, but from front the configuration is as follows:
Front:
ATI Blue+
ATI AquaBlue Special
24 LED's (20 Royal Blue + 4 Blue)
KZ Fiji Purple
Arcadia 14K
ATI Blue+
The 4 Moonlights are on as well, but you cant see them properly with the main lights on.
I am running the LED's off 2 x Meanwell LPC-35/700 model LED Drivers. These drivers allow 12 x 3watt LED's to be run at 700mA each. The 24 LED's are running at almost 60watts.
So combined with the T5's + LED's, I have about 180watts. Due to this fixture having: Active Cooling + Individual Mirror reflectors for the T5's and a combo of 40,60,80 degree lens for the LED's, without even having measured the PAR, I am confident that PAR will rival or most likely beat most 250w halide setups. I believe I have very good PAR and with the assortment of T5 tubes and LED; a very good spectrum of light for corals.
Basically I mounted the LED's onto an Aluminium plate. You cannot mount them directly onto the Sunpowers metal chassis as the heat conductivity through that material is only about 3/20 of Aluminium.
I had to cut a rectangle out from the Sunpower using a Dremmel with slim cutting wheels.
Once this was done, I screwed and thermal glued the Aluminium plate onto the chassis of the Sunpower.
The plate and chassis on their own wont disperse the heat. I tested and within 5 minutes the plate was getting very very warm to the touch.
So I ordered 4 VGA graphics card fans and found a few other bits of low profile heatsinks lying around. All I had to do then was glue them down with thermal paste.
I had to upgrade the AC to DC adaptor that runs the two ATI Sunpower fans as I wanted to run the VGA fans off the same power supply. I could have gone with a seperate powersupply but that meant another couple of wires going into the unit somehow...couldnt be arsed with that.
I then wired everything up and here are a few shots:
1. This shows the LED's mounted onto a secondary surface, ie the Aluminium plate:
2. Here I was playing around with the placement of the fans and heatsinks. Not very pretty, but it will do the job.
3. Final shot showing all the lights on at the same time:
The White balance is screwed up and I didnt bother to take custom white balance readings with my DSLR, but from front the configuration is as follows:
Front:
ATI Blue+
ATI AquaBlue Special
24 LED's (20 Royal Blue + 4 Blue)
KZ Fiji Purple
Arcadia 14K
ATI Blue+
The 4 Moonlights are on as well, but you cant see them properly with the main lights on.
I am running the LED's off 2 x Meanwell LPC-35/700 model LED Drivers. These drivers allow 12 x 3watt LED's to be run at 700mA each. The 24 LED's are running at almost 60watts.
So combined with the T5's + LED's, I have about 180watts. Due to this fixture having: Active Cooling + Individual Mirror reflectors for the T5's and a combo of 40,60,80 degree lens for the LED's, without even having measured the PAR, I am confident that PAR will rival or most likely beat most 250w halide setups. I believe I have very good PAR and with the assortment of T5 tubes and LED; a very good spectrum of light for corals.
sahin
Ultimate Reefer
I'm sorry I forgot to reply to your PM. I intended to post all the details here and reply to your PM, but completely forgot to let you know that I had posted all the details here on my thread. But you found the info at least.
sahin
Ultimate Reefer
HAHA.. I think you got TO MANY Pm's man, LOL I never PM'd ya.. LOLNow how about some pics?.. :thumbsup:
Ah man, sorry. I have my build thread over several reef sites and I am losing track of who's PM'd me where. :spin1: It was Leonardo...better PM him back...
Anyway, I've PM'd back to those who've pm'd me.
I will post some photos in the next couple of days I promise, but it will be just a crappy looking pile of rocks at the moment. I am waiting on reef putty and acrylic rods to start my scaping.
sahin
Ultimate Reefer
Another bit of update:
1. Lights: Having tested the ATI Sunpower LED/T5 Hybrid over the course of today, I checked regularly to see how effective the cooling was, and was not happy with the cooling setup of the LED's. From previous experiance with using LED's in extremely small spaces etc, I knew that the airflow into the unit had to be improved.
One thing I tried to do was power the 2 main Ati Sunpower fans and the 4 LED cooling fans from the same power adaptor...well, it just didnt have enough juice to run all 6 fans and run the main fans at a sufficient speed. So I had to supply a seperate power adaptors, one to power the main ATI fans and another to power the 4 LED cooling fans. Once this was done, I checked things and the unit was running as cool as I need it.
I will test thoroughly tomorrow. But I think it will be ok this time.
2. I put sand in about 5 or 6 days ago and the tank is still slightly cloudy. I am running the BM NAC6 skimmer which has just today started to foam properly. There isnt much to skim though as there is no fishes in the tank, and only a couple of kg's of fully cured liverock transfered from my nano tank.
3. I tested water parameters last night and everything is in order.
4. This tank is so stable temperature wise. My living room about 78'F most of the time and the new tank stays at that temp even with the large return pump and large skimmer pump, and the T5 lighting too.
This means I wont have to use evaporative cooling as much as was needed on my nano tank, which even without the lights would rise into the low 80's.
5. Tomorrow I plan to transfer most of my liverock into this tank. But I will be inspecting each rock and removing pesky things such as vermitid worms, bubble algae and I know there is two small Aiptasias. So I will swish and scrub the rocks well before transferring them into the new tank.
Other than the cloudyness problem, its all going well.
1. Lights: Having tested the ATI Sunpower LED/T5 Hybrid over the course of today, I checked regularly to see how effective the cooling was, and was not happy with the cooling setup of the LED's. From previous experiance with using LED's in extremely small spaces etc, I knew that the airflow into the unit had to be improved.
One thing I tried to do was power the 2 main Ati Sunpower fans and the 4 LED cooling fans from the same power adaptor...well, it just didnt have enough juice to run all 6 fans and run the main fans at a sufficient speed. So I had to supply a seperate power adaptors, one to power the main ATI fans and another to power the 4 LED cooling fans. Once this was done, I checked things and the unit was running as cool as I need it.
I will test thoroughly tomorrow. But I think it will be ok this time.
2. I put sand in about 5 or 6 days ago and the tank is still slightly cloudy. I am running the BM NAC6 skimmer which has just today started to foam properly. There isnt much to skim though as there is no fishes in the tank, and only a couple of kg's of fully cured liverock transfered from my nano tank.
3. I tested water parameters last night and everything is in order.
4. This tank is so stable temperature wise. My living room about 78'F most of the time and the new tank stays at that temp even with the large return pump and large skimmer pump, and the T5 lighting too.
This means I wont have to use evaporative cooling as much as was needed on my nano tank, which even without the lights would rise into the low 80's.
5. Tomorrow I plan to transfer most of my liverock into this tank. But I will be inspecting each rock and removing pesky things such as vermitid worms, bubble algae and I know there is two small Aiptasias. So I will swish and scrub the rocks well before transferring them into the new tank.
Other than the cloudyness problem, its all going well.
sahin
Ultimate Reefer
Update:
1. Bubble Magus NAC6 Skimmer: WOW!!! The skimmer started to produce foam this morning. It took a week to start foaming and produce froth. The reason I am say wow is that I turned the flow up to produce a wetter skimmate as I wanted the tank to be cleared of the bacterial boom and sand storm cloudyness. Well, after a few hours the skimmer cup was half full. So I thought I would pour it out and check out the consistancy.
I expected a watery liquid to be present inside...but NO. The liquid was THICK and rather like syrup. I am so impressed with this skimmer. I put the cup back and it is already produced more of this skimmate. I have been bacteria dosing and so I am sure the skimmer is taking out bacteria. I have high hopes for this tank.
2. Rocks. I move all of my liverock into the 47G today. I spent almost 4 hours with the help of my wife removing every single Vermited worm/snails and bubble algae. I also removed a few sponges that looked like they were doing too well and I felt they may pose a problem to my SPS corals later on and didnt want to take a risk.
We also removed 100's more asterina stars as well.
I would have posted a couple of photos, but I cannot get the white balance right and it doesnt help that the tank is still quite cloudy.
1. Bubble Magus NAC6 Skimmer: WOW!!! The skimmer started to produce foam this morning. It took a week to start foaming and produce froth. The reason I am say wow is that I turned the flow up to produce a wetter skimmate as I wanted the tank to be cleared of the bacterial boom and sand storm cloudyness. Well, after a few hours the skimmer cup was half full. So I thought I would pour it out and check out the consistancy.
I expected a watery liquid to be present inside...but NO. The liquid was THICK and rather like syrup. I am so impressed with this skimmer. I put the cup back and it is already produced more of this skimmate. I have been bacteria dosing and so I am sure the skimmer is taking out bacteria. I have high hopes for this tank.
2. Rocks. I move all of my liverock into the 47G today. I spent almost 4 hours with the help of my wife removing every single Vermited worm/snails and bubble algae. I also removed a few sponges that looked like they were doing too well and I felt they may pose a problem to my SPS corals later on and didnt want to take a risk.
We also removed 100's more asterina stars as well.
I would have posted a couple of photos, but I cannot get the white balance right and it doesnt help that the tank is still quite cloudy.
Similar threads
