Restarting an old 280 build

[Northside Reef]

Yesterday I hosted a meeting for our local reef club. One of the members who is much better than I am at taking pictures brought his camera and took some really nice quality shots. So special thanks goes out to Ben Nicholls for his time and generosity in letting me share these pictures over here on RC.

 

[Northside Reef]

a few more:

 

[Northside Reef]

And even more:













Some from the Clown tank

 

[Northside Reef]

A few equipment shots that look cool to me:

 

[Northside Reef]

And finally the FTS

 

[LuchoTocado]

What led fixtures are they?? Its probably been said before I just didnt see it.

 

[Northside Reef]

What led fixtures are they?? Its probably been said before I just didnt see it.

Rapid LED using a PLC to drive them from my home PC. I will post some info about it later.

 

[Northside Reef]

A little more detail about the LED's I am using. I am using the Dimmable Onyx Rapid LED fixture These LEDs have three channels each:

Channel 1) 14 CREE XT-E Royal Blue

Channel 2) 8 CREE XP-G Cool White

Channel 3) I call mixed it consists of
4 SemiLEDs Violet UV
1 CREE XP-E Green
1 Oslon 660nm Red

I use 5 of these fixtures with varying lens angles the two outside fixtures are 60 degree lenses the two inboard are 80 degree lenses and the one in the center is 100 degrees.

Each channel has it's own 0-10v analog input signal jack that can be used with either a pot or a 0-10v signal (you need to provide) that can be used to dim each of the three channels per fixture.

I have provided separate 0-10v dc signals to each channel on each fixture for a total of 15 separate analog inputs that let me control the intensity throughout the day. I did this using a PLC and I run adjust the operating parameters through my home PC.

Here is what the main interface page looks like:



This page shows you the current time, and the table on the lower left shows what the PLC output is to each channel. For my setup I move the intensity from left to right across the tank. So while the fixture on the far left (or fixture 1 in this picture) is slowly ramping down fixture 5 is still very close to full intensity. This gives me a nice sunrise/sunset affect on the tank.

Clicking on any of the fixture tables on the right will open that channels light schedule. More later need to run.

 

[Northside Reef]

once you click on any of the fixture channels you will open this scheduler for that specific channel



This will vary the output to that channel throughout the day. So when I set for example the intensity in the chart above from 10% at 6:40 AM and 20% at 8:20 the output from the PLC will slowly increase by 10% over that time period. I have all 5 fixtures offset so they reach 100% at different times throughout the day.

 

[Northside Reef]

one of the things I learned about the Rapid LED fixtures are they're not very consistent as to what % a certain channel will turn off or on. for example the blue lights in fixture 1 will come on at 6% while in fixture 2 they won't come on until I hit 11% The lights will stay on until I drop below 3% in some of the fixtures while others drop out under 7%. So to help me set up the fixtures so I can have a dusk to dawn effect. I added a rapid clock to cycle through the day so I can watch which LEDs come at what time of the day. I can then adjust them so they fire in the correct sequence.

 

[Northside Reef]

Finally I put in a manual mode and a acclimation mode.



from this page I can adjust the output to whatever I want so I can mic the colors and intensity to any appearance I want.

With the acclimation mode I have the output decreased by 50% and then slowly increase back to 100% by however many days I set it for. in the screenshot above I have the output to the LEDs decrease to 50% and it will gradually increase to 100% over 10 days. This lets me put a coral anywhere in the tank and let it adjust to the LEDs over a couple of weeks.

 

[Newbie Aquarist]

Very well documented. Lots of work went into that.

 

[Northside Reef]

lol but fun to play with when ya get a bunch of reefers together and want to geek out over how I set the LEDs up

 

[Northside Reef]

Some random shots Ben took of the filtershed. By far the hardest part of this build to get right for me. I learned so much over the past nearly two years building this. I wish I could have a do-over but with everything I learned going into it.

 

[LuchoTocado]

Thanks for the answer, its a real nice light setup you have there

 

[Northside Reef]

So we have been waiting for our clowns to figure out the RBTA in their tank...

One gets it... The other, not so much lol

 

[Northside Reef]

Thanks for the answer, its a real nice light setup you have there

Thank you. it was stuff mostly laying around and definitely not the most cost effective way to go about it if someone were to have to buy those components.

 

[Northside Reef]

looking over some of the pictures of the tank I was happy to see some growth on a few of the corals.

This picture is the "for sale" picture posted by one of our local reefers. the one in the top left is the one I purchased.



This is one of the shots Ben got of the tank but to the right under the frogspawn is the same coral. It's pretty cool to see it has grown this much in just a few months.

 

[Northside Reef]

No new pics of the tank. It is just growing in, not much to report.

Friday I leave for Australia for at least two weeks. We have had a couple of power outages recently so I have been worried something is going to go wrong while we're gone. I have my oldest watching things but if I lose power there is not much she can do.


So for peace of mind I installed one of these. It runs on NG so it is has a virtually unlimited fuel supply and it is constantly monitoring incoming power. If we lose power 10 seconds later it turns on and powers up the house (and my aquarium )

 

[jnarowe]

Nice job!