Neptune Aquatics

Kinetic's ELOS 120

kinetic

Supporting Member
ELOS System 120My tank is an ELOS System 120. I've had it for about 2 years now, and the only things in it are literally, rock, trochus snails, nassarius snails, some corraline, tiger pods, mysis (might all be eaten), and a scarlet cleaner shrimp.I started the tank with no seed rock, instead I added pods and such from various sources after dosing my tank with ammonia for a few months to bring up bacteria levels. The only hitchhikers came from my dumb trochus snails (corraline and a bit of algae).Last year, a Bellus Genicanthus that I didn't quarantine came with marine velvet, killing my 5 ventralis anthias, the bellus, a handful of trimma and eviota gobies, and my clownfish, within a day. I had the ventralis for over 5 months at that point, the gobies for more, and the clownfish for 3 years. I have been fishless for 6 months or more now.In the meantime, I gave all my corals away (mostly to BAR members and new reefers), so now I'm paying a ridiculous electricity bill to keep some snails =PI'm trying to finally get my house remodel underway. Lots of unfortunate problems (architect was diagnosed with leukemia halfway through the project, but thank goodness he is doing better now) had kept this from happening earlier. Once the house is done, I will be moving over there with the tank. I'm thinking in December.The tank will live on an island, I'm going to actually have the contractor reinforce the floor under where the island will be, and probably have him get a woodworker to build the stand (to look attached, but not actually attached). I will run piping through the crawlspace to a RODI water resevoir for topoff, a clean saltwater mix for a continuous water change (I need to buy a litermeter III), and maybe some piping to some remote fuge and chiller in the closet (might not be needed). I'll also have GFCI outlets under the floor there as well, so I won't need to run wires all over the floor. And lastly hanging a pendant above. I'm thinking of biting the bullet and going for a full LED replacement for my halides.If anyone has suggestions on LED's as lighting for SPS (and even criticism for the cost vs. electricity bills), please let me know! I'll start updating this thread with the tank plans. For now, no new animals.



 
Looks very nice Art, if anything it's probably good that you don't have much in the tank that needs taking care of while you're doing a remodel.

As to the LED bit, I'll let Tony get into specifics. But given the legal/patent issues currently surrounding LED lighting for aquariums if it were me I'd stay away from them for the time being.
 
I believe aqua illuminations is safe (I vaguely remember that they pay orbitech or whomever, royalties). I've heard lots of good things on those fixtures. Their design in general looks pretty solid. Way better engineering considerations wrt thermal loads than PFO. Not sure if the drivers are better, but I haven't heard any complaints in that department either.

They also look pretty nice and will fit in with the elos decor ;)
http://www.aquaillumination.com/

You can actually run commands to the unit with RS232, so if you are slick, well..you can get slick :p


They have a handful of reasonable measurements on their site. I wish they used a lumenarc or lumenbright to compare to vs the spider reflector 250.
 
As long as there is no color control of the LED itself it is not a violation of the patent. This is why there are now a dozen or so companies selling LED's for aquarium usage.

If you have a grand to burn the new plasma lamp is insane. I saw them in use at the MBA last weekend and they rock. The shimmer lines are much brighter/tighter then that of a MH.
 
Are those the tiny bulbs that were like the equivalent of a 400w MH? I saw the video awhile back and have been waiting to see when they were gonna be used in any sort of aquarium application.
 
someone doesn't follow Reef Builders.... www.reefbuilders.com

That is them but the actual field numbers are better then a 400w from what those who have seen the data tell me.

http://www.reefbuilders.com/2009/06/16/aqua-illumination-plasma-lighting-closer-reality/

http://www.reefbuilders.com/2009/05/11/aqua-illumination-plasma-lighting/

http://www.lifi.com/pdfs/ProductBulletinLIFI-STA-40Series.pdf

http://www.lifi.com/
 
No doubt the shimmer lines are insane, but it isn't because the MH isn't capable of them in principle. MH shimmer is mitigated some by the multiple reflections used in these new fancy reflectors. The plasma in the RB link uses the reflector, but only in forward propogation. MH has a bunch more due to every reflective surface above the plane of the bulb. That said, the efficiency of the lumenarc in the article is lower then it's potential because it is well above all the focal plans of the "psuedo parabolas". Tempting to model the reflector and ray trace the intensity at various internal heights. I may have just found a project for me to model :p

Technical OT mumbo jumbo :p I'd be interested to know when they come out with other "colors" by doping other nobel gases and metal halide complexes:-D
 
The color is fantastic BTW. No doubt MH can produce them, it's one of the most common replies when some one first gets one :lol:
 
No problem :) It's become the start of my day now (RB) :lol:

FWIW I'll probably be getting one or two of those for my 150 *if* I decide to drop the MH. I'd then have those and two of the actinic LED strip lights from ALS. It does mean a near 2K jump in price for me but it fits the bill of what I am trying to do with the tank. You can simply dim the lights to the desired par output and there is little to no color shift/flicker/etc. Great units, but the price needs to drop WAY down IMO.
 
While the light looked nice and bright, I'd be curious of real world usage over a tank. Looking at the spectrum

wave-intensity-plasma.gif


This doesn't look particularly promising, way too much red/yellow/green intensity. Also those two drops around 450 & 420(?) nm doesn't bode well for that color "pop" in corals.
 
I wouldn't jump to any conclusions until we see some over the tank shots (which we will see soon). The dips aren't a biggie. In fact, the integrated intensity
 
I saw the light and what it did with coralline, baly's, corynactis, sponges, etc and they looked great. The CRI is 96/96 IIRC and that's not too shabby. Sure it's not a 14KK but you could supplement with it T5 actinic, LED actinic, etc.. The public aquariums and reef crest/shallow water people will love these bulbs @ 6K though.
 
I'm not saying the colors won't look great under the bulb, what I'm saying is the long term effects of what colors the corals turn might not be desirable. But who knows could be! The site only mentions the 6kK bulbs, and the Lumens/Watt seems comparable (slightly larger) than the most efficient MH (also quite yellow), I'd worry that output would drop dramatically if the bulbs blued up too much.

All that said however, I think big selling point for these is their life span and they may not color shift or have sputtering issues like halides. (at least on paper).
 
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