gee awesome now im cleaning pepsi off the floor that i couldnt help spit out of laughter ;PPPP

Haha... What's their fancy names...:wink:

fancipora sp.

:mrgreen:

The first one I'm going to call "Blue Steel Delight".

The second one (Acropora Tenuis) I shall call, "Arctic Winter nights"

The third one (Acropora Plana) I will call "Aurora Borealis Rave"

Hope that helps!

Sure does now where can I get one of each? I want them!:twised:

sorry, not too sure where you would find these in Victoria.. I got mine from a LFS (Concept Aquariums) here in Calgary. I think they are fairly common though? Not sure what the first one is but the second one is just a blue tipped Acropora Tenuis and that third one is a Acropora Plana.

Sorry to hijack but are concept aquariums and concept aquatics two different shops? I always wondered that :neutral:

is it even possible to hijack and derailed train??

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...ead_derail.jpg

Anyway, they are the same shop :-)

Ah that makes sense. I was always confused because of two different websites :|

They are having a bit of an identity crisis at the moment but I think they will have that sorted out soon :-)

It's been over a year since I last gave my return pump a good soaking..

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...068BAAF012.jpg

So sparkly after the vinager bath. Also noticed more output from it.

Sump firing on all cylinders!

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...0692CD4F60.jpg

4 cylinders in fact.

amazing set up!!! like your thread your tank set up is just as organized, iam so mad jelly!

So shiny.

Looks like a brand new setup again.


Mike

Thanks !

Ya it's remarkable what a spot of cleaning can do lol

I think you should visit my tank next! :razz:

Looks good :biggrin:

what's the deal with your table of content?! i want to navigate to all the recent points of interest why did you stop updating it?!

#Crying

Maybe cause you were the only one. :wink:

I hope you didn't mix some of that windshield washer fluid into the vinegar. Lol


Mike

Are you kidding me brah? Try having another look. It's up to date.

omg it is haha. poor brad.

It's true..

Flirting with LEDs
 

So last month I had an opportunity to try out a couple of LED light fixtures. Specifically the Radion and a Kessil 350W. I know that both of these lights work great and there are a lot of people who have grown all sorts of stuff under these lights so their effectiveness was not what I was interested in. What I'm really interested in is how they appear to me over my tank. Simply put, how do they look (in my eyes). I have seen a lot of LEDs over tanks at LFS and haven't really been impressed by the light that they cast. Some of them exhibit noticeable discoing effect while many others just seemed dim to me.

What I did was mount each light in the middle of my tank, more or less exactly where my middle metal halide sits and took pictures of them at a fixed exposure setting on my camera. I did this because I was curious to compare the light output of these lights with my metal halide. It is hard to compare light output with your naked eye because our eyes will adjust the light automatically and we have absolutely no control over that. However, with an dSLR camera you can fix the exposure so that the sensor is capturing the same image and amount of light each time.

First up was my 250watt 15K eBay halide.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_2336.jpg

One thing to note here is that I have some major over hangs, and even so you can still make out some details under them. This is with the halide directly above the middle structure.

Next up is the Kessil 350W. This is the WIDE ANGLE version of the 350. For those who don't know kessils, they are not programmable, but they do have dials on them that allow you to manually adjust the BLUE channel and the WHITE channel LEDs. This picture is with both the blue and white channels maxed out.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_2339.jpg

My impressions:
1. It's way too blue for my taste.
2. It isn't quite as bright as the halide (but I sorta knew that going into this). I can see that it is a bit darker under the overhangs.
3. It's funny that one of the claims to fame with LEDs is their ability to provide you that shimmer effect that Halides give you. HOWEVER, with this unit I personally found the shimmer to be overbearing. Yes, to my eyes there was way TOO MUCH shimmer. I didn't know that was possible, but sure enough, it was there and very distracting. In fact, if you look at the light as it enters the tank at the top you can see the light rays! I suppose it is possible that over time my eyes would adjust to it and I would just get used to it.

Here is the Kessil 350W again redialed with the blue channel taken down a few notices to try and match the colour temp of the halide.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_2340.jpg

Impressions:

1. The temperature here is closer to the 15K halide but in order to achieve this I had to knock the blue channel down quite a bit. As a result there is a significant loss of light. It is much dimmer now.

2. The insane shimmering was reduced due to less blue channel being cast.

Finally, here is the Radion unit at full blast mounted in the same spot.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_2346.jpg

Impressions:

1. The colour temp is more or less the same as the Kessil at full blast. I did not bother to play around with the programming to adjust the colour temperature for the following reasons.

2. Already I could tell that it was dimmer than my halide (again, I kinda knew that going into this).

3. While the shimmering was there it was not as intense as it was with the Kessil.

4. While not annoying and overbearing like with some other units, I could still notice some degree of discoing (separation of LED channels on the sandbed and on some of my lighter coloured corals). I know that a lot of people don't notice the disco with Radions but all of our eyes are different. I can see why some people would not notice it. It's very subtle but I can still notice it (compared to T5s or Halides).

Final Thoughts..

* Both of these lights seem to put out a lot of light. Obviously not as much as Halides, but not everyone needs to blast their tanks with halides. There are people successfully growing SPS under both of these lights so there is enough light there.

* Both lights shimmered as they should but the Kessil had way too much shimmer for some reason. I don't know why.

* I could still see a disco effect with the Radion but not with the Kessil. The Kessil has a much more tightly packed LED array which virtually eliminates this. The Radion's LED array is still far enough apart that I can notice it, but many other people apparently do not.

* I really like the manual adjustability of the Kessil. In searching for a new light we all have different needs. For me, all I really want my light to do is turn on and off. Kind of like with my current light. I can not dim my halides or T5s and I'm OK with that. I don't really need to dim my LEDs either. I don't need lightening storms or programmed cloud cover. I'm fine with just an ON/OFF function for them. As a result of this simplicity the Kessil ends up being MUCH MUCH cheaper than other units with built in computers for programmability.

* And finally, if my halide and T5 combo fixture were to break down today and I was forced to buy a new light I would first try to find a new Halide and T5 combo fixture. However, if I could not, and I was forced to go with LEDs, I would get the Kessil 350 and possibly add T5 supplementation for dusk and dawn viewing. Thankfully my fixture is still trucking along and I don't really have any issues with it. Sure, replacing bulbs is a bit price in the long run but whatever, I wouldn't be in this hobby if I wasn't prepared to spend some money. The halides do throw a bit of heat into the tank but so long as my central AC unit is working it does a perfectly fine job of cooling the house and the tank down. That in conjunction with fans that I have on the controller have worked out well. Mind you, this may all change if I ever get my hands on a GHL Mitras..

Halide/T5 combo FTW!

Since the maristar has generously sized reflectors (for a complete fixture) it's able to decently light your generously sized tower of rock. I don't think any canon styled LED pendant is going to be a fit over your tank due to your scaping (especially the center of the tank).

Even tho I haven't seen the 350 in action yet it is worrisome to think about how much intensity is lost when trying to achieve a slightly blue overall colour temp. At the same time I feel my 150 could use just a tiny bit more blue but supplementing an array of 150s with some blue strips will likely produce colour banded shadows so it's lose/lose. Decisions decisions!

First off LEDs suck compared to Halide T5 combos, get use to it. Second a Kessil isn't right for you, I could have told you that and Radions have color blending issues. Buy the right fixture next time :wink:

Thanks for sharing the pics and experiences with the light fixtures. I've never owned MH, but do agree the LED's do not compare. I'm curious though, do the pics with the LEDs actually reflect what you saw in person as far as coloring is concerned? I ask because I have a T5/led combo on my 55 and my slr has no problem picking up the tank as I see it. My 180, with 3 radions however looks completely different in photos, with the same settings and the pictures are not true to color. I still have not nailed down the settings for pictures for this tank.

Yes, I have rendered the photos (colour temps) so that they closely match what my eyes see. What mode are you shooting in? I shoot in RAW format and process the photo myself rather than letting the camera process the photo for me. I have noticed that SLRs do have a hard time guessing what white balance to use on your LED lit tanks. Thats why I apply white balance manually.

Kien, thanks for sharing. Now please test the mitras as well :-)

http://www.fishbrains.net/images/28/pajama.jpg

Can't get over the size of your PJC. Ever think of selling?

I'm pretty sure the PJC would cast a significant shadow in your tank under your Kessil.

I was just going to strap one of these to him to negate his effect.

New Tunze 6105s
 

For flow in my tank I've been using two tunze 6105s. They are controlled by my Profilux controller and provide somewhat random water movement by alternating their speed. They've worked great for 3 years now but recently I have noticed that the Profilux control on one of them has started to act funny. I first noticed this when one of the power heads didn't stop when I activated the feed pause on my controller. Instead of trying to fix it I decided to just buy a new one and to re-purpose the defective one as a backup/general purpose mixing power head. Normally this would be somewhat of a trivial purchase. Swap out power head for a new one of the exact same model; YAWN! Well, when I got home with the new 6105 and opened it up I was pleasantly surprised by the changes and just had to post about it.

The first thing I noticed was that they now provide you with two options for the output nozzle/gate as seen here..

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...56336E7BB5.jpg

My original 6105 from 3 years ago didn't have those two options. Just the smaller of the two.

[IMG]http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...562A0B5A2B.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...562466E955.jpg[/IMG]

The other thing I noticed was the addition of noise/vibration dampeners as seen here (blue feet)..

[IMG]http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...562E8A7DD1.jpg[/IMG]

This is also quite a nice improvement. I have taken videos under water in my tank and when I play those videos back the powerheads can be quite noisy underwater! With an original 6105 in the tank and the new one I can definitely tell the difference even though the original 6105 wasn't that noisy (outside of the water) to begin with.

I'm quite happy with these improvements. The wider output makes a huge difference in my flow patterns. Not that I had any issues with flow from my original 6105s but flow just got more better! It's much wider and more randomer in areas that were not as randomy before. I like these so much that I'll be paying the Double-Ds another visit to pick up another one of these shortly to replace the other (older) 6105 that's still in the tank.

LOL the double D's!! Love it

:surprise::surprise::surprise::surprise::surprise:

Yes, I should have maybe qualified that a bit. Trivial in comparison to a Vortech MP40ES purchase :lol:

Yeah the blue dampeners have been around for a bit and are rad. The wide flow shroud (which you could order on its own to save $) came about after the flow tests by ecotech showed the tunze line flowed far less than advertised. Your new pump should also have come with a 24v jumper to boost output.

I wish the nano streams had wide flow options too :(

Ya I seemed to have missed that while episode about the flow. Funny how they still sell the 6105s with the smaller shroud though. Also, I tried looking for just the shroud on J&L but couldn't find it :-(

HOLY CRAP! I didn't even notice that those jumpers were in there! I plugged in the 24v jumper (default was the 18v) and I nearly blew the tentacles off my torch! So awesome, thanks for the tip! :biggrin: Going to have to play with my programming to spin them down lower periodically.

GHL Mitras in the haus.
 

So recently I had an opportunity to try out a Radion and a Kessil LED units to see how they compared. Two very different units but great at what they do and that is put out light. Not quite Metal Halide light but good enough I think.

Well, next up on my hit list is a GHL Mitras. First of all, this is one sexy unit! I'm a huge fan of silver. I believe they come in a black as well.

The control panel is quite easy to use and it's nice that it is on the side and not on the top like the Radion. I found the control panel on the Radion a bit of a pain to use. The GHL with its built in LCD panel is quite a nice treat.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...psb326aa8c.jpg

And yes, they do come with their own sunglasses!

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...psd335d223.jpg

The Mitras is equipped with a generous 6 pods, each pod housing 12 LEDs with a mixture of Blues, Whites, Reds and Greens.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...ps63714bcc.jpg

Just another quick disclaimer here. My intent is not to test the effectiveness of the LED unit. Rather, I am interested to see how the look compared to my tried and true Metal Halid+T5 combo. That is, can they match the aesthetics that I prefer?

For comparison sake I'm going to throw up my 250watt, 15K Metal Halide picture again. Note also that no T5s are on, just the Metal Halide. Also, these bulbs are about 8 months old so they are due for replacement which means they're probably burning closer to 12K or 13K.

Metal Halide.
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_2336.jpg

Next up is the Mitras at full blast. All channels, all on. (idental camera exposure settings as the Metal Halide photo).
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...ps7fa01229.jpg

Immediately you can see that there is a $#!t load of light here! LIke I mean A LOT! Now I know why it came with sunglasses. Seriously, like HOLY ****.

But, clearly this isn't the ideal setting. There's way too much red here. Next I dialed down the Red channel to ZERO.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...ps7d8c5dd2.jpg

Still A LOT of light here! Plus, not a bad colour cast. I played around with the colour combinations a bit more (did I mention that I REALLY like the control panel? So nice!) to see if I could get something more in line with my taste. Here is the blue dialed down to something more appealing to me. Pretty close to 15K in my eyes.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...psb86e1636.jpg

All in all a very pleasing look. Not quite as bright as the halide but still a lot of light. The most light that I've seen from an LED at this colour temperature for sure.

Okay, so ya, this light KICKS ASS. However, it isn't perfect. Sadly, like many others this LED unit does suffer from a noticeable disco effect. Keep in mind that everyone's eyes are different and this effect may not be noticeable by everyone. I on the other hand could definitely notice the separation of lights on my sand bed. It wasn't as bad as some units that I've seen, but not as good as the Kessil. The Kessil with its tightly packed LED array pretty much eliminated this effect.

Kessil LED Array:
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_2348.jpg

Mitras LED Array:
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...psa6c954e7.jpg

And here it is in all its glory (or gory?), the dreaded disco effect..

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...ps06c38b94.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...ps3e90df5f.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...ps46c481a2.jpg

Keep in mind also that these photos exaggerate the effect because of the freeze frame nature of the dSLR camera. However, it's there, and as I said, some people will notice it and some will not.

Final thoughts.

1. This is one sexy light. The build quality is excellent and by far the best that I've see on the market. Clearly a lot of thought has gone into this unit with its generous distribution of pods to its user friendly control panel with LCD display. Plus, it comes with a freaking hanging kit!

2. The colours are quite nice with a virtually an infinite number of possibilities! Plus, damn this unit is BRIGHT!

3. Like with all LEDs you get the coveted caustic effect (ie, shimmering). Sadly, like with most LEDs the shimmering is also its Achilles heel as that's where the dreaded disco effect rears its ugly head. Well, I suppose it won't necessarily be ugly to everyone.

What I find most amazing about the LED lighting is that it made all the stuff on the substrate disappear. It's like magic! :razz: Or perhaps the fish just moved them out of the way to clear the dance floor so they really groove to those disco effects. :wink: