Questions about putting Mars Aqua on 600+ gal tank

[Fishhead61]

[QUOTE

And a question from one of your other posts, yes the mars are fine for a 30" deep tank. A buddy of mine has a SPS dominant tank 48" X 24" X 30" deep with 4 mars running at 100% blue 80% white with no issues for growth or color.[/QUOTE]

Cheepreef----->
I'd like to hear more about your friends tank. Does he post on this forum? Does he have any pics that are posted or that you can share? I started reading about the Photons some also. Heck, I'm still kinda stuck in the mud. :spin2:

 

[Cheapreef]

[QUOTE

And a question from one of your other posts, yes the mars are fine for a 30" deep tank. A buddy of mine has a SPS dominant tank 48" X 24" X 30" deep with 4 mars running at 100% blue 80% white with no issues for growth or color.

Cheepreef----->
I'd like to hear more about your friends tank. Does he post on this forum? Does he have any pics that are posted or that you can share? I started reading about the Photons some also. Heck, I'm still kinda stuck in the mud. :spin2:[/QUOTE]

He doesn't, here are the last few pics I have. There taken with a phone, the tank looks far better in person.
As I said earlier 30" deep tank with 4 Mars Aqua lights running 100% blue and 80% white.

 

[jda]

This would probably work out fine. ...just don't keep any super high light stuff near the bottom... most people keep lower stuff light down there as well. If you get a clam, just put it in the rock work. Mushrooms, zoas, chalices are all great in lower light.

Large tanks are hard to light. Black Boxes and Halides (reflectors) are usually the best solution. Add a fan or two into your plans... even T5 and LED can heat up a tank a bit with so many units.

 

[Fishhead61]

Hey JDA, wow I didn't think the LEDs would heat up a tank. The aquarium room is a 13'x4' area. I installed a 3/4 ton split unit to remove moisture and heat. I'm trying very hard to stay away from MH because of the heat (I know they work). The AC will be supplemented with a fan under the tank blowing it across and back upwards to the AC unit. Encouraging to hear from peeps that the black box units have success. As many as I'm thinking I'll have to put on the tank (maybe 14) 165 watt or equivalent of the 300 watts, I imagine it'll produce some heat. I'm glad I already dropped in the AC unit.

 

[Fishhead61]

Cheapreef thanks for the pics. It looks like he's seeing success even putting some SPS in the lower areas of the tank. Using what he's done as a template, I'd have to use 16 units to mimic his lighting. That's a lot of lights, but at a lot cheaper rate, minus some bells and whistles of course. I just didn't want to spend $8K to $10K on lighting with other brands. I really didn't want to try to do it as a low budget tank, but just couldn't imagine spending that much on lights.

 

[jda]

2300 watts, even though you will not use all of them all of the time, will bring a bit of heat to anything. Ron Reefman uses a chiller in Florida and he has LEDs... this is not very much from the lights, but southern climates usually need at-least fans.

Good luck.

 

[tkeracer619]

I have the same size tank in progress. I have 4x radium 20k 250w w/m80 ballasts. Hamilton ballasts and reflectors. Will also be adding t5. I thought about the LED route but settled on the halides because I know they will work great.

I have a lot of open sand and the rock structure is directly under the halides. If I went with a more traditional rockwork I would have probably jumped to a 400w setup. Tank will be 100% sps.

 

[Fishhead61]

TKERACER, It makes me think about MH but it scares me. I was wondering if I would need a chiller one day so I got 5 dedicated circuits run to the fish room. AC, Lights, and spread the rest out over the other 3 circuits. I"ve never run MH but friends always complain about the heat. Do you have a separate room for your tank, and how are you dealing with the added heat?

 

[jda]

We live in Colorado, it is cool here and even in the warm months, the humidity is in the 20/40 percent range. I only speak for myself, but his experience is probably similar... I do have chillers on my tanks and they will not run at all if I put fans over them starting in July through the second week of August. The rest of the time, the heat is a severe blessing where more than half of my tank costs are heat. Even in Missouri, fans would keep my tanks cool if I turned them on when the MH came on. The heat never discouraged me, though... I would rather have a chiller and the performance of MH and they cover large tanks better than anything.

 

[tkeracer619]

Yeah, I have a separate room for filtration and stuff. In my and jda's case the heat is a welcome addition. In your case you are talking the same amount of wattage so the heat input to your home is going to be the same. It might not be the same into the water but into the home should be roughly similar depending on your actual wattage consumed.

Like jda said, our highest avg humidity is around 40%, this lets us manage humidity by venting to the outside. I spend a fair amount of time in Louisiana so I know what you're dealing with. That begs the question of what you are doing to mitigate your humidity on such an aquarium? Do you have a large AC unit or dedicated dehumidifier? I fear adding over 2000watts of lighting heat to the house with a large body of water could overwhelm your AC if it wasn't sized right.

My 600gal is in a living space but due to the size of the house and the outdoor humidity I still have to run a humidifier in the winter to stay comfortable. We use evaporative cooling in the summer. And the filtration room in the basement has a HRV which controls humidity in the basement by exchanging air and humidity with the outside while retaining the temperature.

 

[Fishhead61]

We live in Colorado, it is cool here and even in the warm months, the humidity is in the 20/40 percent range. I only speak for myself, but his experience is probably similar... I do have chillers on my tanks and they will not run at all if I put fans over them starting in July through the second week of August. The rest of the time, the heat is a severe blessing where more than half of my tank costs are heat. Even in Missouri, fans would keep my tanks cool if I turned them on when the MH came on. The heat never discouraged me, though... I would rather have a chiller and the performance of MH and they cover large tanks better than anything.

I have a friend who has the same size tank in a fish room 2 times the size as mine. He has a 3/4 AC split unit removing all the moisture and keeping room and tank cool. I'll talk to him tomorrow to see if he has a chiller which I don't remember seeing. Just when I thought I MIGHT be making some decisions about lights, not rethinking it all. I'm thankful you guys are give valuable input. I'm thinking about MH but I really know nothing about them since I've always used T5s, and further back in the old days just simple lights on smaller tanks for fresh water tanks.

 

[Fishhead61]

Yeah, I have a separate room for filtration and stuff. In my and jda's case the heat is a welcome addition. In your case you are talking the same amount of wattage so the heat input to your home is going to be the same. It might not be the same into the water but into the home should be roughly similar depending on your actual wattage consumed.

Like jda said, our highest avg humidity is around 40%, this lets us manage humidity by venting to the outside. I spend a fair amount of time in Louisiana so I know what you're dealing with. That begs the question of what you are doing to mitigate your humidity on such an aquarium? Do you have a large AC unit or dedicated dehumidifier? I fear adding over 2000watts of lighting heat to the house with a large body of water could overwhelm your AC if it wasn't sized right.

My 600gal is in a living space but due to the size of the house and the outdoor humidity I still have to run a humidifier in the winter to stay comfortable. We use evaporative cooling in the summer. And the filtration room in the basement has a HRV which controls humidity in the basement by exchanging air and humidity with the outside while retaining the temperature.

By putting in the 3/4 ton split AC I'll be able to control moisture and temperature in the fish room. At least in theory!! My friend has the exact same size tank and twice the size of fish room and he's able to control room temperature and humidity in the fish room. My fish room should be decently sealed off and able to keep moisture from getting to other rooms in house. The thing you're saying about putting watts into the space will be adding heat goes over my head. I always thought that unless the wattage produced actual heat, like in MH lights, it wouldn't be hot ie. LED lights. Since they don't put out the heat, they should not put much heat into the room.

 

[tkeracer619]

LEDs most certainly put out heat. A watt is a watt. Some of the energy is put into light and some is put into heat. The light then converts back to heat.

So 2000w of MH has the exact same amount of heat input into the room as 2000w of LED. It might not put as much heat into the tank because a lot of that energy is dissipated into the heatsink on LED compared to the bulb on the halide but in the end, the heat is the same.

So if you are able to control the temp of the room then it may not matter which tech you go with. 600gallons is a lot of water to light as well as keep warm so depending on what temp you have to keep the room at to keep the humidity down you may need more heat input into the tank than you think. A lot of people need to run a dedicated humidifier on top of their AC so that they don't have to drive the AC down to ridiculous temps. Seems like a lot of people run the temps down to 65 in Louisiana to keep the humidity down low enough...

Something to also consider is you are basing your wattage numbers on those black boxes off the label, they don't actually use that much wattage. They have 55 3w leds. Max wattage is actually around 125w per fixture, not 165w.

If you go with black boxes look at SB Reeflights.

 

[Fishhead61]

If you go with black boxes look at SB Reeflights.

Can you tell me more about the SB Reeflights? I started looking at them this evening? Have you used them or a friend used them? How are they diff from the mars aqua, if you have any info on that.

 

[jayball]

Can you tell me more about the SB Reeflights? I started looking at them this evening? Have you used them or a friend used them? How are they diff from the mars aqua, if you have any info on that.

They have a 2 year warranty, mix 120 and 90 degree optics, have 395 NM and cyan diodes and more 420NM violet than most. They also claim quieter higher flow fan's. Similar to Reefbreeders you get stateside support. I can not speak first-hand to either but if I was to go out and purchase black boxes it would be these.

The one thing I really dislike is the condescending sales pitch they put on each of their product pages.

 

[Whiskylen]

I have a sbreef wifi on my tank, I've had it for 2.5 months and no issues so far. It's quiet fairly easy to program and more than enough par for my application


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Bob Nell]

I have about 800 gal in a 1000 square foot room and even with central air humidity is still an issue. I had to add a dehumidifier.

 

[Fishhead61]

They have a 2 year warranty, mix 120 and 90 degree optics, have 395 NM and cyan diodes and more 420NM violet than most. They also claim quieter higher flow fan's. Similar to Reefbreeders you get stateside support. I can not speak first-hand to either but if I was to go out and purchase black boxes it would be these.

The one thing I really dislike is the condescending sales pitch they put on each of their product pages.

Well I guess I'll find out about the sales pitch because I sent an email for them to call me..... These seem much more expensive than the Mars Aqua black box units. I think I would have to put 5 SB Reef light units on this 8'x4' tank.

 

[Fishhead61]

I have a sbreef wifi on my tank, I've had it for 2.5 months and no issues so far. It's quiet fairly easy to program and more than enough par for my application


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Seems like a nice light. What's in your tank? Mixed reef, how deep? What light did you use before?

 

[Fishhead61]

I have about 800 gal in a 1000 square foot room and even with central air humidity is still an issue. I had to add a dehumidifier.

Bob I'm concerned about the moisture issue. I believe that the 3/4 ton split unit I installed will control the temp and moisture in this fish room that will be sealed off from the house AC system. The room is 13'x4'. The only think not inside the fish room will be the glass showing on both rooms. Otherwise it should be reasonably sealed off from the house. I guess if there is too much moisture, I'll add a dehumidifier. A fellow fish head around here has a similar set up with a bigger room and it's keeping his moisture under control. He did tell me he installed a vent that comes on every 30 mins for a couple mins to "purge the room".