Reef nutrition

Kinetic's ELOS 120

Calibration went smoothly! I had a 500mL beaker handy so I got some fairly precise measurements. Pumping from the new saltwater resevoir in the basement to the display yielded a 197 flow rate, while pulling down into the drain was about 240. I then set the flow rate to 5.41 liters a day, which should equate to 10 gallons per week. I have the pumps not in my sump yet, but in a small frag swap container with two holes cut in the lid to hold the polythelene tubing in place. If all goes well, the water level shouldn't change over the course of the day.

I'll check tomorrow night to see how well it did. The water in the container was RO/DI, so tomorrow it should yield a specific gravity of 1.026... and there should be no water on the ground ;)

I'm excited! I hope it works out.
 
phc567 said:
dont mean to sound like a old lady BUT.... better play by the rules and QT those fish this time around. in the last yr. there have been a lot of flukes at the wholesalers.
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It's been a big issue MUCH longer then just a year. This has been going on since around 2001 when we started seeing a influx of them from Sri Lanka and quickly spread to many other exporting countries. HEre in the B.A. several stores got hit hard around 2003-2004.
 
After a series of tests and talking to Scott over at SpectraPure, looks like my LM III controller might be faulty. The pump b controller is not consistent and won't switch on the pump correctly. I've swapped pumps, recalibrated, primed pumps for like 10 minutes, etc. So I'll probably have to get a replacement.

On my drive back up from San Jose this weekend, stopped at Atlantis (poor wallet) and picked up a setosa, sunset monti, a rose colored frag (I believe it's the red tabling, the guy who worked there wasn't sure if it was the tabling one or not), and the Lokani that's kind of blue/green. Yay! All corals I had before / always wanted.

I'm gonna look around for some other stuff as well, but probably not going to buy anything from the stores for awhile.

BTW visited Dolphin Pet Village while I was down in the area, they have TONS of stuff! WOW!
 
Just finished breaking in Pump A (the built in pump) and calibrated it. Also recalibrated another pump and put that into the pump C plug. Pump A draws water from sump to drain, pump C now draws water from resevoir to sump.
  • If the water level stays consistent in my test container, LM III's Pump B slot is faulty
  • If the water level once again changes, where there's less water pumped in than out, something else is wrong with my setup other than the pumps, or the controls for Pump A are also faulty, or pump C is faulty and A and B are actually good.
    If it's the other way around, then I'm completely stumped

We'll see what happens =)
 
After seeing a new version of the AquaIllumination LED pod, I think I'm leaning towards 4 of them as a lighting solution.

fan_guard-600x337.jpg


I'll hang 4 of them, separately (without that rack) over the tank. it says 4 will cover a 48" long tank. Given they power at 80watts, that will be 320watts, as opposed to my current 2x250 halide + 2x55 watt T5 which is 610watts. That's almost half the amount of wattage!

The new version with the white body will come out late october. I'll probably grab it from ReefGeek (love their customer support).

The newest model is said to be 10% cheaper as the previous. That'll be good.
 
Or if this ever makes it, two of these units would be awesome! $900 each, and they cover a spread of 24-30" of tank each. 94 watts total though if I get two... wonder if that'd be enough?

http://www.reefbuilders.com/2009/05/22/mame-design-limited-edition-kidney-ecolyte-demonstrates-tricked-led-light/
 
Art, have you read any long term successful story with LED on SPS (especially acros)? Looks like you want to keep SPS, and I am just wondering how they will like the spectrum of LEDs.
 
tonggao said:
Art, have you read any long term successful story with LED on SPS (especially acros)? Looks like you want to keep SPS, and I am just wondering how they will like the spectrum of LEDs.
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Very good point! I have not found anything yet. I don't know if these fixtures have been around long enough (or have a long enough lifetime) to have tried it out yet. I'm not very good at looking at spectrum charts and all that to see if acros will like it, or if spectrums actually matter. I guess it'll be sort of a shot in the dark. I'm hoping they are just as good?

What do you think would be a good time period to measure long term success? A year? two?

I saw that recently reefbuilders article about the guy who kept a bunch of lobos in a tank with LED spotlights, that was cool!
 
Question you have to ask yourself is do you want to be a potential pioneer. Are you trying to save energy? Or do you just want the cool high tech toys :D

Regardless if they work or not, halides do give a good pop, yeah they're hot, yeah they take more energy but I don't think LEDs are even in the same class as MH bulbs yet.
 
I don't know if anybody have the patient of one or two years (at least I do not have :D), but I was hoping to see some good successful stories with acros at least in more than half a year time span. The LEDs have been around way longer than that. I have not searched very hard, but I did tried a little. So far I heard people saying good things about them, but most people who posted only keep softies/LPSs, and a few showed a few SPSs, mostly digitata, maybe a few tenius. I have not seen a good growth sequence for some harder SPSs yet. That is why I am skeptical about it, and only went with actinic LED lights so far except one of my nano tank which I do not plan to keep SPS.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Question you have to ask yourself is do you want to be a potential pioneer. Are you trying to save energy? Or do you just want the cool high tech toys :D
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Good questions (wow lots of good questions this round)! Being a pioneer would be neat, and trying to save energy (going from 610 to 320 watts is significant to me I think), and I love cool high tech toys. All of the above. I think that while pioneering, if my corals hate it, I'll have to switch back to MH/T5.

sfsuphysics said:
Regardless if they work or not, halides do give a good pop, yeah they're hot, yeah they take more energy but I don't think LEDs are even in the same class as MH bulbs yet.
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What do you think needs to be done to further along LEDs? Or is it that MH are so matured in terms of their optimization for corals that LEDs seem to be just starting to work.

Tong makes a good point, they have been out for awhile now, though they've never caught on. Upfront price? That might be the demise of these things.
 
Well for me a metal halide has one primary advantage over EVERY other type of bulb that's out there whether it's fluorescent or LED... it's a single point source, and it's a bright SOB at a single point. Yeah you use reflectors to help distribute that light however you do get a bright spot as a result. Yeah you could use T5s and get similar outputs on average over an entire area, but you still don't get hot spots (which IMO can be a good thing), and with LEDs you have the best of both worlds, without really doing terribly good at either. Now it's true in reality the sun doesn't act as a hotspot even though it's only half a degree wide in the sky, sunlight really does hit the land fairly uniformly, but for some reason the halides give you the intensity of the sun, with the pop that fluorescent bulbs can sometimes do if you blue them up a bit.

And yes I don't think LEDs are really where they should be now, MH? Hell the only change in technology with them really is fine tuning the colors the put out, LEDs have been doing that plus have been physically getting brighter (more power). Also, and Tony can correct me if I'm wrong, I think LEDs are very narrow band with the light the emit, where MH do often have a sharp peak to be sure, but also spreads out some light over other parts of the spectrum.

Why have they never really caught on? Oh I think price is what's killing them. Its like solar panels, in many parts of the country you could put solar panels up and within 15-20 years they paid for themselves no problem, and that's without rebates, but you have to pony up the $20-40k for them which most people don't want to do. For me, $1000 for a "175W equivalent" that covers a 18" area? HELL NO! Sure they MIGHT pay themselves off over time, however as the technology does increase, do you really want to be stuck with crappy bulbs? Its one thing if they were cheaper, because as long as it pays itself off in a few bulbs worth of time it's all good, but if you have to literally wait for 5 years worth of bulbs before you break even? No thank you. Besides have you ever stuck with a single bulb type? I've tried many different types of bulbs over my reefing career and even when I find a "good one" I tend to get others until I find "the perfect" one ... which will then be replaced I'm sure in a year or two.
 
sfsuphysics said:
also sorry about the rambling, it's late, I'm tired, and I'm sure half of it doesn't make sense when I read it again in the mornign :)
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Hah no need to be sorry, that's a very good ramble you have =) Lots of good points that's for sure. Also the AquaIllumination that I was looking at isn't even that great looking in terms of a hanging pendant. Better than it's first version, but there's some slick MH solutions out there now that look much nicer.
 
Finally, my anemone decided to come out when the Metal Halides came on. The tank gets a lot of natural sunlight, so the anemone I got only crawled out from a hole in the rocks during the day, ducked in before the MH came on, and finally after 3 or 4 weeks, the nem's coming out when it should get it's glorious 610 watts.

I've been feeding thawed marine mysis every 3 days or so to the nem. The color is still BRIGHT red, and is sticky. Looks decent. I think it's not as red as when I first got it from Atlantis, but hoping it will color back up.

The nem is a red bubble tip, the tips are not completely round, but are between bubbly and long. I'd take pictures, but my camera isn't working at the moment =( Hopefully I can send that in to get fixed under warranty soon.
 
LEDs are an old technology, but the "efficient" high power ones without a ginormous emitter surface area, are fairly new.

LEDs are also narrow band sources, but they are tehcnically broader then the typical emission "lines" we like with high kelvin bulbs. If all you use are two LEDs (royal blue and white), you don't have the full spectral width of MH. The light itensity is quite low out in the red and reasonably low in the 400-420nm range for most MH, but it is absent in LEDs used for reefing. This likely won't effect growth in a large way. It could be that for equal PAR, the LEDs grow as well or could grow better.

I've been trying to find good strong UV (400-420) sources on the cheap, but they aren't there.

The ultimate LED setup given current tech IMO will be royal blue/white LEDs (probably in 50/50 given current cree bins) and about 1 red per 6 white/blue (12) on a dimmer to tune. Then have the top end suplimented with VHOs (pr a t5 if they can ever get one to crank 400-420 well)
 
It'd be curious to see how corals which ordinarily look red will look under LED lighting with no red present to start with. Sure there's the red from the ambient lighting in the room, but it'd be interesting to see if the red is a fluorescence or a reflected color... and by interesting I mean when someone else ponies up the money for the LED setups :D
 
Yeah I'd like to see that as well (with some one else's money... and coral)
 
Im just waiting for the MC-E Color emitters to be released so I can see their pricing compared to discrete. Each MC-E-C has 4 emitters and can be independently driven:
1 white
1 blue (~455)
1 green (~520)
1 red (~625)

6 MC-E-C,and 4 dimmable current sources....yum.
 
LED's look to be the future, but the future I think they are, so now might not be the time to get them. The only one I like right now is the newest revision of the AquaIllumination, but the look is still somewhat odd (4 pods) when hanging I think. It may, on the other hand, look totally kick butt with 4 hanging above a braceless elos. 4 smaller pods might make it look more open top rather than one long fixture. 4 individual ones also means I can arrange them somewhat differently, but also that it's going to be harder to hang correctly.

I'm also looking into the Giesmann Infinity 2x250 + 4xT5. They use no fans! Is that possible? Will it burn out? Will it just cause the lamps to burn out faster?

Salty Supply has the option to get the custom colors, I want the polar white one. It's priced just below $2000, while the aquaillums are going to be $2300 or so. Comes with the lamps already, so I'll probably just stick with those for a year until they burn out, then look for options.

Anyone here have experience with Giesmann Infinity fixtures? I remember some problems here and there with them at Ocean's Treasures at some point?
 
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