SO, when things are working, change it to make it better right?
I decided to add violet LED's, not a lot, just 6 of them, 3 on each side of the halide. Since each side of the halide will have 33W of LED on it, I decided to go with actual heat sink material this time instead of the square tubing.
There was a LOT of spill into the room with this arrangement:
I'll figure that out later...
Decided it was time to work on the stand a bit more:
There is LED rope lights above that shelf, they are not very bright though. It does illuminate the knick knacks when the lights in the house are out though.
Time to address that shelving unit in the basement:
Left over paint from the living room, I don't mind if I do!
I needed a hand to get that stand into the basement, while I waited for some help with that, I solved the light spill issue.
Stainless steel, held in place by some super high strength double sided sticky tape. The strips are not quite long enough, but the next size up was 4X the price. I'll live with that little gap at the back.
Here are the last 2, my heater was on 100% of the time with the house temp between 65-68, so I decided to insulate the sump.
Now I can see times where the heater is off, for about 90 minutes, then on for about 120, off for 90, on for 120... The tank stays between 76 and 76.5 99% of the time.
And finally:
This is the latest view from my spot on the couch. :D
Good evening everyone, it has been a long while since I posted anything on the boards about my tank! I am still in the hobby, recovering from a case of LARS (Lazy A** Reefer Syndrome) where I did lose quite a few corals. Unfortunately they were the SPS that are hard or impossible to find, the old school ones.
Anyway, I have moved away from the metal halide/led combo and went 100% LED using these AcroStar pucks. I decided to go with the 1/2 Mega, 8 3W emitters on a 2" puck. My first plan was to use my existing power supply and 6 of the pucks, but that didn't work as the power supply was to small to drive all 6 properly with the LDD drivers. (The supply was 36v, 150W max, and I was pushing that to the edge, with no success.)
With that plan not working out, I upgrade my supply to a 45v 350W version and ordered 2 more of the pucks from Yann.
I couldn't be happier with the results!
Here is a list of what I am using: 45V 350W Power Supply from Amazon 2 LDD 1000 mAH Drivers 2 LDD 700 mAH Drivers 1 AcroIQ Micro Driver (Also from Blue Acro) This thing is NEAT, and TINY https://blueacro.com/acroiq/ 1 Voltage dropping thing from EBay, 45v in, 12v out to run the fan and 1 O2 Surplus 0-10V to 5v PWM converter board 8 Half-Mega 18k Blue https://blueacro.com/acrostar/ PCI cooling fan from Amazon 36" Makers Slim Heatsink
The emitter itself, still in the plastic. Really well done, looks like a full on commercial production product, not something designed and built by a hobbyist.