Heidi's 150g cube

[MizTanks]

Here's some more praise from a reefette! Heidi your tank rocks! Love the clean look of the sand!

[Heidi]

Here's some more praise from a reefette! Heidi your tank rocks! Love the clean look of the sand!

Thanks Miz! So do I, I love it more EVERYday... my Nitrates are coming down after my water change and stuff is really starting to color back up. I just need some growth hehe

Heidi

[greg97527]

Nice cube. Mine will be there soon if I can get the micro bubble problem solved. Looks great though.

Sent from my HTC Thunderbolt using Tapatalk.

[Heidi]

Thanks Greg!

[Badfish]

Sorry to hear about your losses Heidi. I feel your pain, the holidays were a little rough on our tank as well; we lost our clam, some zoas were damaged and I had to remove a chromis to give the tang more room. Glad to see you bounced back so well!

[ernisse]

Heidi,

First of all nice tank, it has great appeal. I am getting back into this hobby after a 6 year break and have the same size tank as you (36x36). I have decided to ditch my MH setup on this go around and go with AI units. I noticed you went with two units, but 3 is recommended on the AI page. I have been doing a ton of reading on these light and have noticed most people have put too many units in and need to run these at very low settings to get the appropriate PAR values. Do you feel that 2 units is sufficient coverage for you? Are you still happy with the decision to use the super blue units? I like a 14k-16k look. 20k seems to blue to me so I plan to run the super blues with the blue lights turned down a bit. My lights will sit about 12" AWL, I think yours are higher than that. Thanks for any comments.

[Heidi]

Hi and thanks for the complements! I love my tank and one of the main reasons I love it is the AIs. I have only 2 Units and I was afraid of the "too blue" units but I am do glad I went with them. The royal blue is kinda purple so it adds some red into the mix making all of your colors pop nicely not overly blue. Mine are mounted 18" from the waters surface, 8 inches of space between the units. Mine spill a bit of light over the edges of the tank so I could lower them quite a bit. I had them at a foot over the water and was having a little shading on the left and right side tops where I had a frag rock. I run my lights at 100% now for 7 hours a day and have them between 60% and 1% as they go through their day and night cycle. If I were to have more units I would buy 2 more and set them all square, I am not sure why they recommended 3 units for our cube, seems like it would look funky ??? Anyway hope that helps some!
Heidi

[rosebud161616]

I think they just have a chart that goes by length x width and the recommend so many lights based on the size and not taking shape into account. On our 100 cube (30"x30") we also have 2 fixtures. I think 3 could work out nicely on a cube if you made them in a diamond shape without the back light if you had a middle overflow back there (like yours.) I hope that makes sense!

4 could be cool too, but holy moly that's a lot of light!

[ernisse]

I think they just have a chart that goes by length x width and the recommend so many lights based on the size and not taking shape into account. On our 100 cube (30"x30") we also have 2 fixtures. I think 3 could work out nicely on a cube if you made them in a diamond shape without the back light if you had a middle overflow back there (like yours.) I hope that makes sense!

4 could be cool too, but holy moly that's a lot of light!

Yes, that is what I was planning if I went with three. My issue is I had this custom built and the overflow is directly in the middle and the rock work surrounds the overflow so I need to illuminate the entire perimeter. Four seems like a tremendous amount of light and probably would have most of the units dialed way back.

[Heidi]

Yes, that is what I was planning if I went with three. My issue is I had this custom built and the overflow is directly in the middle and the rock work surrounds the overflow so I need to illuminate the entire perimeter. Four seems like a tremendous amount of light and probably would have most of the units dialed way back.

This is exactly how my overflow and rock work are. If I did the diamond I would have a ton of overlap in the middle and my perimeter wouldn't be lit how I like. That is why it was either 2 and risk not enough or 4 an risk too much. I can assure you you will have plenty of light with only two units.
Heidi