Llamarama's RSM 130
 

Hey guys! So after being out of the hobby for a bit due to renting and moving too much and parting with all of my fishes and equipment we've finally bought a house! Its a small house so I had to compromise for a small tank but I'm gonna work with what I've got for now! Picked up this sweet 34g Red Sea Max a couple weeks ago and some rock from some established tanks and finally got my rock how I think I want it.

Week 1

http://i.imgur.com/4EPA2DI.jpg

Week 2

http://i.imgur.com/rxZBM5A.jpg

I'm going to order an led retrofit kit next week but having a hard time deciding between Steve's kit or the rapidled kit. Any advice?

Nice start & welcome back.

I don't have experience with the rapid led's, but I've set up 3 aquariums with parts from steves leds. So far so good, on the steves led's, you can chose how many led's each driver can handle in multiples of 7, but you need to run a separate 24v power supply. I also used the Typhon controller and for an extra $50 per aquarium you can have 4 separate channels that can fade in and out at different times of day. The one feature i would have liked to have for the dimming is non linear fading. The typhon lets you set the length of time it fades over, but only at a constant rate. I don't actually know if any other controller lets you control the fading in a non linear fashion.

Looking at the Rapid led sight I do like the heat sink they have available, but you have a canopy so you could get away with using square tube like steve's leds suggests and it would be fine.

Thanks! I'll definitely be doing some more research before I order but both retrofit kits made to fit into the hood and work on the existing timer look pretty decent

Welcome back to the hobby, and critter keeping (I see a mushroom :smile:)

update! Since all of our rock came from established systems there was really no cycle to speak of so we slowly started adding some fish! We started with 2 clowns (one from a fellow can reefer who also threw in a gbta which I was apprehensive about so early but it's doing pretty well and sticky and eating) and 3 sexy shrimp. Levels stayed good at 0 for over a week so we added a coral beauty and a blue dot sleeper goby. Things are starting to clear up but all the corals that came attached to my rocks are doing better!

http://i.imgur.com/kT0EVjP.jpg

Ordering my led kit from rapidled tomorrow and hope to get it installed next week!

It comes with 27 X 3w Leds and I'm thinking of this for the color mix... Any thoughts?

12 X royal blue
8 X cool white
1 X red
1 X green
2 X neutral white
3 X violet

Still battling microbubbles too but I'll get it figured!