The inwall 380 starfire reborn
- Thread starter Sparkss
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Here is the URL for the DIY Clear Mesh Top thread :
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=817485&highlight=mesh+top
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=817485&highlight=mesh+top
mrcrab
In Memoriam
Sparkss,
When you're talking about "box track" what do you mean? Last couple of times I've been up on the catwalk I was thinking...this won't work. Even with the lights pulled up to the ceiling, I won't have much room to work. I think I need some way to actually roll them back away from over the tank.
When you're talking about "box track" what do you mean? Last couple of times I've been up on the catwalk I was thinking...this won't work. Even with the lights pulled up to the ceiling, I won't have much room to work. I think I need some way to actually roll them back away from over the tank.
jnarowe
New member
OK both of you: I have all three lamps on tracks. The center one is in a dish reflector that makes the lighting less intense. My thought on this is that it would draw the fish into the center of the tank but I don't think it makes any difference. In fact I may switch that one to an LIII.
The two on the ends are in Lumenarcs that I got off Property Room for a nice savings.These two lamps, as I stated already move front to back, and on my 8' long tank these three lamps are more than enough coverage.
I made the tracks longer than the width of the tank so I could move each individual one completely off the tank if needed. I did this instead of the "box" treatment so that if I needed to work in one part of the tank, the other part wouldn't suffer the disruption. It also helps when working on the tank to have some ambient light to see with. Keep that in mind as you build your lighting.
Steve Weast built his as a box lighting system and he has the room to pull the entire unit off the tank. I think he also has secondary lighting when the lights are moved out of position. You can see pics of it at Oregon Reef. He did a really good job and if you are going to use that method, I highly recommend asking him about it. He's a great guy and willing to help others build better systems.
Here are a couple of not-so-good pics of mine:
You can see that I have very limited headroom above my tank as well as limited space to move the lamps off it during maintainance so this was the best solution I could come up with. It works, it's fairly simple, and electrically efficient.
The two on the ends are in Lumenarcs that I got off Property Room for a nice savings.These two lamps, as I stated already move front to back, and on my 8' long tank these three lamps are more than enough coverage.
I made the tracks longer than the width of the tank so I could move each individual one completely off the tank if needed. I did this instead of the "box" treatment so that if I needed to work in one part of the tank, the other part wouldn't suffer the disruption. It also helps when working on the tank to have some ambient light to see with. Keep that in mind as you build your lighting.
Steve Weast built his as a box lighting system and he has the room to pull the entire unit off the tank. I think he also has secondary lighting when the lights are moved out of position. You can see pics of it at Oregon Reef. He did a really good job and if you are going to use that method, I highly recommend asking him about it. He's a great guy and willing to help others build better systems.
Here are a couple of not-so-good pics of mine:
You can see that I have very limited headroom above my tank as well as limited space to move the lamps off it during maintainance so this was the best solution I could come up with. It works, it's fairly simple, and electrically efficient.
xinumaster
reef addict
Thanks Tom, I would like to see you LA3 setup before I buy mine. I have 3 lumenmax2 but I might switch to LA3 if yours works exactly what you expected.
strittmatter
New member
Thank you for finding the thread. I like the mesh top idea. I am still working on my 180 inwall and i plan on having wrasses in my tank, so i will probably go with this idea. So where did you end up getting your mesh from. And are you making one large top or are you making a top for each light?
Box track is the generic name for pocket door track, also sometime sold as/referred to as barn door track. It is popular to use on lighting arrays for just that purpose, and that is also why we will be employing it in our setup, to allow us to move the lights completely away from over the tank to give us full access to the tank itself. I think the thread in the Large Reef Tanks forum labeled Marks DIY 900g shows a good example of such an installation (and optimistically in a little over a week so will this thread.. show a good example of an installation of box track
).HTH
Glad I could help out with locating that thread for ya
I more or less had planned on one large top. I already have the framing purchased sufficient to do it in one shot. I got the mesh from a fellow local reefer that had some spare, I think it was an old fishing net that he had.. the important part was that he verified it as UV resistant and the mesh is 1/4" and clear. The reason I was going to do 1 large top was to avoid shadow lines from the "sections" if I did it in more than one. I understand what you were saying about "per light", but our lighting will have overlap, and I am counting on that overlap
, so there wouldn't be any "sweet spot" to put the "seam" between the sections.Johnathan
interesting thought behind multiple movers versus one to move a frame. I have 2 movers now but was thinking of just using one to move both lights (And also any actinic supplementation). Otherwise any T5/VHO actinic supp would need to be separate and fixed. We have a similar challenge with overhead obstructions reducing our headroom, but your solution of extending the light mover tracks won't work for us, we have more room from side to side than in the back of the tank for moving the lights off to.
. Great idea, and I had considered it, but because of how we are set up I quickly dissmissed it earlier today in lieu of needing to use the box track for side to side "reloaction" of the lights.
Perry
I am not a huge fan of SLS, but I hear that their reflectors are pretty close to PGS in terms of efficiency, etc. Just as soon as we can get the lights up and operational I will take some pictures to share and also will share my opinion on just how effective our proposed setup ends up being (keeping my fingers crossed, since it stands to net us a nice savings at the end of each month on ur electric bill, compared to what I ahd expected it to be).
interesting thought behind multiple movers versus one to move a frame. I have 2 movers now but was thinking of just using one to move both lights (And also any actinic supplementation). Otherwise any T5/VHO actinic supp would need to be separate and fixed. We have a similar challenge with overhead obstructions reducing our headroom, but your solution of extending the light mover tracks won't work for us, we have more room from side to side than in the back of the tank for moving the lights off to.
. Great idea, and I had considered it, but because of how we are set up I quickly dissmissed it earlier today in lieu of needing to use the box track for side to side "reloaction" of the lights.Perry
I am not a huge fan of SLS, but I hear that their reflectors are pretty close to PGS in terms of efficiency, etc. Just as soon as we can get the lights up and operational I will take some pictures to share and also will share my opinion on just how effective our proposed setup ends up being (keeping my fingers crossed, since it stands to net us a nice savings at the end of each month on ur electric bill, compared to what I ahd expected it to be).
jnarowe
New member
and that's what it's all about! My 1000g display only bumped my electric bill by $70. 
I got confused because you talked about using the light movers to move the lamps front-to-back. I guess if you can only go to the side then maybe not using a mover would be better for relocating the lamps while doing maintainance? If you use movers to move the lamps side to side, you will end up with occassionally large shadows in the center of the tank so I don't think that will work. And double racking, ie: one for side-to-side, and movers for front-to-back would eat up more headroom...I guess I am still not clear on what you propose to do, but I am very ineterested to see how you solve it!
I got confused because you talked about using the light movers to move the lamps front-to-back. I guess if you can only go to the side then maybe not using a mover would be better for relocating the lamps while doing maintainance? If you use movers to move the lamps side to side, you will end up with occassionally large shadows in the center of the tank so I don't think that will work. And double racking, ie: one for side-to-side, and movers for front-to-back would eat up more headroom...I guess I am still not clear on what you propose to do, but I am very ineterested to see how you solve it!ok, let me try this again
The box track is for moving the lights out of the way when I need to work on the tank, nothing else. The box track will not play any part in the light mover (at least not as I have it planned now). The box track will run side to side, so that when I slide it out of the way I can slide it either left or right out of my way. Since I have acccess to the back and 2 sides for working if I slid it back I would need to slide it significantly to get it out of my way for accessing the tank from the back. I simply do not have that much room/clearance.
Now, for the light movers, I will be going from front to back, for several reasons. The tank is 78" wide, a typical LAIII can throw up to a 3'x3' area of light, so I am less worried about lighting the tank from side to side (I want the ends to be a little darker than the middle, to create more of a feeling of depth anyways). What I was concerned about was front to back coverage, since the tank os 48" and the lights only "good" for about 36" of that. So the light mover will move them from the front to the back, making up that additional space. The movers will move somwhere between 12" and 18", front to back, I really need to experiment with what works best, or more specifically, just what will be needed. I may find out with our lighting combo that 12" will be more than enough, but also may come to realize that 18" may be needed, starting further towards the front than I had originally planned.
The stepper motors that we got are 10 revoltion motors, but the owner at PGS told me that there was a "delay" setting inbetween steps that I could set. Since they were used, and such a great deal, I just went with what he had. A lower stepper would have been my preference, I think he said they have down to 5 or maybe even 3.
Once I get it all setup and worked out, then hopefully it will be more clear (to everyone.. including myself).
The box track is for moving the lights out of the way when I need to work on the tank, nothing else. The box track will not play any part in the light mover (at least not as I have it planned now). The box track will run side to side, so that when I slide it out of the way I can slide it either left or right out of my way. Since I have acccess to the back and 2 sides for working if I slid it back I would need to slide it significantly to get it out of my way for accessing the tank from the back. I simply do not have that much room/clearance.
Now, for the light movers, I will be going from front to back, for several reasons. The tank is 78" wide, a typical LAIII can throw up to a 3'x3' area of light, so I am less worried about lighting the tank from side to side (I want the ends to be a little darker than the middle, to create more of a feeling of depth anyways). What I was concerned about was front to back coverage, since the tank os 48" and the lights only "good" for about 36" of that. So the light mover will move them from the front to the back, making up that additional space. The movers will move somwhere between 12" and 18", front to back, I really need to experiment with what works best, or more specifically, just what will be needed. I may find out with our lighting combo that 12" will be more than enough, but also may come to realize that 18" may be needed, starting further towards the front than I had originally planned.
The stepper motors that we got are 10 revoltion motors, but the owner at PGS told me that there was a "delay" setting inbetween steps that I could set. Since they were used, and such a great deal, I just went with what he had. A lower stepper would have been my preference, I think he said they have down to 5 or maybe even 3.
Once I get it all setup and worked out, then hopefully it will be more clear (to everyone.. including myself
).
Thanks for the pict Mike.. that is exactly what we have in mind
Unistrut is very similar to box track, with smoe minor diferences. Did you use wheels inside of it or just the unistrut lock nuts ? Unistrut can typically support more weight than box track, although box track does come in various grades (we went with the lowest grade, 110 lb capacity, as only the reflectors would be supported by it, so I saw no reason to spend any more than we had to on those).
Unistrut is very similar to box track, with smoe minor diferences. Did you use wheels inside of it or just the unistrut lock nuts ? Unistrut can typically support more weight than box track, although box track does come in various grades (we went with the lowest grade, 110 lb capacity, as only the reflectors would be supported by it, so I saw no reason to spend any more than we had to on those
).
We already have a 4' flourescent work light (less than $20 at HD) on the ceiling just back from the tank. With it turned on I can see that a good amount of light makes it's way into the tank. Not to mention that we can always just move the lighting partly out of the way (versus completely off from over the tank) and still have use of spill over light from the MHs, if needed.
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