Blog Comments

I am rather excited to see this come together. I hope you make me feel foolish for paying what I did for my AI Sols (that will be no small feat as I really do like my lights)!

i just placed my order, here is what i got
18 cree XP-G cool white
18 cree XP-E royal blue
4 meanwell 60-48D Drivers
Thermal grease
18 65degree lenses
18 55degree lenses
4 powercords
pre-cut wire (garbage)

my total came to $430 after shipping and taxes which isnt too horrible. next i will be ordering my heatsinks which will run me about $60 bringing the total to $500. the sad part is im going to be paying more to ship the heatsinks then they actually cost... i estimate about $50 of additional costs, plus whatever its costs for the acrylic cover which i expect to be expensive

Check these kits out should give you a better idea of what you need. http://reefledlights.com/aquarium-lighting/led-kits/ .You only need a resistor if you need to drop the incoming voltage to the led. As far as a fuse i just wouldnt use a driver that can over drive the led's. If you what to put a fuse in to protect from spikes for example the led is 700ma and 1200ma short pulse you put a 1000ma fuse inline.

I missed the 24" cube part. I read 40g and assumed. With it being a 24" an Evolution LED would work great for you. I have the 14k unit over my tank now and I love it. My tank is 30" wide, so you wouldn't have the same issues as me with the light not getting to the edges. They actually say it can light 36" wide, so you would be safe. I have mine mounted 5" above my water and I grow SPS very well. Acans, favia... moderate light corals do great on my sand bed and I'm 18" deep as well. I highly recommend it. Order from Mike www.buildmytank.com and tell him Matt sent you! :-)

http://www.buildmytank.com/product.php?id_product=184

His corals are also good. He is who just recently shipped me my acan, meteor shower, candy apple zoas, goblin fire zoas, purple death paly's ect.

The 30" model is out of my budget at the moment( I’m going to have to pay for my summer semester soon) it’s also too big for my tank I don’t really want a 6" overhang

the more LED options I look at the more I want to go back to MH until prices come down,dont gat me wrong when I found the K3 unit i was super excited but the more reading i do the more I realize no one has it...or the older k2 , which worries me, right now the only LEDs I can afford are the cheap imports, I can’t find much info on these units and the fact that there is spelling mistakes on the spec pages makes me even more cautions, I just don’t think the quality is there

The cost of replacing the MH lamps will just have to be budgeted for as a monthly tank expense, as for electrical costs I don’t pay the electric bill at the moment so I don’t care, perhaps when I move out I will though

Most importantly with the MH I know it will definitely work and that I will get the proper “coverage” I’m looking for with the reflector

This being said until I actually make the purchase I’m going to keep looking and reading, who knows I may just find the perfect LED for me

Cree is more expensive... because it is better! This looks like a sweet light. I would get the larger (78cm is ~30in) one if I were you though. I'm not considering this light over one of my future tanks. I love the color panels in the center! Interesting concept...

If you get the smaller light, I believe you'll wish it were larger in the future. I have an LED light and the only thing I wish about mine is that it were wider over my tank. It covers the tank just fine, but I have SPS and if I place them towards the edge of my tank the light doesn't come from overhead but instead to the side, and this causes the side away from the lighting to be not colored as well. Not a huge issue, but well worth waiting a little longer to get a better and wider light in my opinion. :-)

OMG i think i found my lighting unit!!!!

the controlability looks bad ***, it uses 20 white and 12 blue 3w cree or bridgelux LEDS and something called RGB-P true-color remote-control auxiliary lighting system its could be totally useless but you can suplement in red green blue and purple lighting to tweek the pop of your coral. its wide aswell which i LOVE
http://www.aquashoponline.com/48-new...rgb-light.html
i still need to do more reading on it though, im deciding between cree or bridgelux, there is a $100 diffrence and im not sure exactly why

Just bought on pre order 4 led ecoxotic pill shaped 100 watt dimming feature.
2 White 2 blue. Total 400 watts.

I think it's better to have stable pH rather than higher pH, and it's not too awful low at 7.8, so I wouldn't be real concerned. I likely wouldn't dose it myself. :-)

I'm an LED guy myself. MH is basically tried and true. I don't think you can go wrong there. And we don't even have to talk about energy savings either. Your biggest advantages to LED are no replacement bulbs and changing color temp. Something that you'll be able to do with that Maxspect fixture that you'll never be able to do with any watt MH is look at your tank under 14k lighting, push a button and look at your tank under 6.5k lighting, push another and look at it under 22k lighting ect. With multiple fixtures and bulbs ect ect ect you can do something similar, but the ability to change color temps is simply amazing. I cannot describe it. My tank looks great in the morning under my white only LEDs. My dendro looks amazing under it. My blues kick on with the whites in the afternoon and it looks exactly 14k and everything looks good. SPS colors are popping. My kedds redd zoas rock, my acan and duncans look great ect. In the evening my whites shut off and it's blues only and ohhh man. Goblin Fire Zoas look amazing, green slimer looks radioactive, even a regular ol red monti cap turns into this glowing pink plate. It's beautiful. I'm so glad I don't have to pick just 1 color. :-)

Your acans will do fine. Just get those lights up higher to avoid too much intensity (which "cooks" corals).

Those running heaters will say they aren't running chillers any longer, but I've never used a chiller so.... seems pointless to me at this juncture.

melev- I agree 250w is allot of lighting but I really want to get in to more sps and clams. going back to a 150w seems like money spent, where as 250w is truly and upgrade and will halp me sleep better at night lol. How do you think my acans would hold up under this light? Im a little worried it may be too much. Also it is roughly the same cost for the reflector and only a bit more for the ballast so why not I figure, it makes it easier to upgrade latter.

im curious to know if the people with LED's need to run heaters more often are they really saving money on energy? i know my 150w heater only comes on from time to time at night when the lights are off, if they are saving ~200w from going MH -> LED then having to run a 200w heater for a full day periodically is there still a cost benefit? if i think about it using my tank i have a 150w heater and if i go with LED ill be saving 82watts per hour my lighting is on, but that will cause me to run my 150w heater much more...i think it would equal out.

DJ- i think you’ve convinced me, I’ve also seen some of these 5-10watt LEDs ive also seen 30watt ones perhaps the reason we don’t see them used is because of the heat the generate compared to the 1watt and even the 3watt ones

i wouldnt jump into led just yet there are 5 to 10 watt leds out now in the right spectrum for reef keeping they just havent been put into fixtures yet in the lighting market. If i was to go led id do it diy so you can get the latest tech. Nothing wrong with tried and true methods while things unfold either

250w of MH lighting plus T5s over a 45g? Sounds like a lot of light to me, plenty for anything. I'm only beginning to embrace LEDs myself, so I understand your desire to wait a little longer before making that change. People that run LEDs are reporting the need to run heaters in their tanks to keep the temperature up.

melev- thanks! for my first shot at it i agree it didnt come out too horrible, i dont have a router but im considering buying one for my next reactor build. when i came across the plans for the magnet stirrer i was actually looking for instructions on home distilling, then i got thinking of using it for water changes to mix salt water for hours then i thought of mixing kalk

neelixx- thanks for the help! ill have a look around the surplus electronic stores and see what i can find if it helps at all the transformer im now using is 6v @ 1A the fan is rated for 12v @ .25A

My pH probe is correctly calibrated i actually just bought big bottles of calibration soloution really cheap from lab depot

My low pH has been a problem ive been fighting as long as the tank has been setup, ive ruled out all possible causes such as low Oxygen and whatnot, im learning to accept it now. on average my pH is 7.90 during the day and 7.80 at night. from time to time i get it up to 8.10 during the day with the addition of kalk but my alk gets too high and i need to cut back. i really have no clue what the problem is

Hi Shawn. Nice set of pics. Congratulations on the new setup. Waiting a couple of extra weeks for the exact tank you want is a good thing, you'll be happier on the long run. All to often people will cheap-out on equipment rather than wait a little longer in order to save up money for they really want or need.

Why do you think your pH is low? Perhaps your probe needs to be re-calibrated?

I would definitely go much higher than 1000k I would probably get a pot that maxes out at maybe 100M or more. I dont think the current is very high, but, even so, you may get a small bit of heat from it.

That came out pretty good. Thanks for sharing it with us. I wouldn't have thought of a computer fan for the magnet stirrer.

A large holesaw would have made that one piece easier to cut/bore out. Our a router bit, tracing the inner surface of the 4.5" tubing with its bearing.

midnight- i ended up doing that not to long ago actually with really good results, the magnets mounted to the fan are now 1/4" away from the reactor it has definitly lowered the frequency of null starts when i add to much kalk and it settles in a mass during a 6 hour off period. im considering steping up to 6v now and seeing it it will work this time. can anyone suggest a useable resistance for a pot to control speed? i went to the electronics store yesterday and they looked at me like an idiot when i told them what i was doing...they werent very helpful with picking out the right pot and i ended up buying one that had basicly no effect on the speed of the fan i think it was 1000k ill have to go find the package