4 gallon pico thread

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by fishoholic

Cool! I have a new found love for pico tanks after starting my 2.5g. The Kessil looks awesome over it

Something about keeping corals in the minimum necessary setup is so appealing to me, I'm not sure why. I also love that when I really want it to look brand new, washing the inside of this thing out in the sink is no more difficult than cleaning a cooking pot. One of the reasons I haven't gotten the 8 gallon yet is that I think it will be more of a pain to clean!

Originally Posted by christyf5

Hot damn! That looks awesome (and I did see this before you posted the link in the TOTM quarterly thread ).

I love that you've tried all those lighting systems. When I first started it was with compact fluorescent, then t5 (tank is 12x12x12, 7.5gal or so) then I talked to Jeff at J&L and he figured LED wasn't worth it. Now the T5 setup is TU and they don't sell bulbs for the compact fluorescent setup anymore (can't find them) so I'm thinking of going to LED anyways. Wasn't planning on doing a Kessil but they seem to be the best bang for your buck. Did you find the flat rack LED system (4th pic down) ok? Thats the one I was looking at because it seemed the least costly but now I'm thinking maybe kessil or whatever is available to me more locally so I can see it before I buy it (I'm picky about color too).

Thanks, it's getting there!

To be honest I think smaller tanks is where LEDs really shine (get it, shine, see what I did there?). The good ones are so bloody expensive that lighting a big tank properly can cost almost as much as an undergraduate degree. But on small tanks you have so many more options and the cost is way more justifiable I think. The key is a) not over-doing it, LEDs are more powerful than they seem and b) getting the mix of colours that will really make what you're keeping pop. The flat rack fixture came with the tank and was pretty basic, the colours looked good, but it was really dim looking and it was soooooo flimsy, I was afraid to touch it, it felt like a cheap kids toy. It still managed to bleach one of my ricordias to within an inch of it's life, but it didn't seem to have the pop to make other LPS look good. It was probably sufficient and since it came with the the $150 tank, it was an extremely good deal, it just wasn't for me.

If you're looking at switching I can't speak highly enough of the kessil, one A150 would light a 7 gallon tank no problem, but you get no control over the brightness or colour mix so you have to make sure to buy the colour blend you like, or spend the extra cash for an A350 and turn the intensity way down. There's also some really cool PAR38 bulbs that are incorporating really innovative diode colour blends now too that could easily have enough power. But man I am in love with this Kessil. It's like having a metal halide over the tank, the shimmer is outrageous. There was barely any shimmer from the flat rack CADlights unit because the bulbs were evenly spaced across the fixture. Also the first two lights had noticeable colour separation, and the Kessil has zero. My only real complaint about the Kessil is the hanging options over such a small tank. I hate how massive the gooseneck is compared to the tank, and since my whole tank is only 10 inches front to back (7.5 inches of that is the display) I have to bend the gooseneck in such a way that the light is closer to the water surface than I want to get it to be properly centred over the box. Some sort of custom hanging situation would have been better, but I'm limited in that I can't put holes in the wall and the tank is sitting on a very small wheeled filing cabinet.