Asylumdown's 275 Tank build

[kien]

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

My prediction: Keener is going to buy LEDs before the end of this year!

I already have my LEDs on order!

[lastlight]

Those look quite true to real life. Real life bring pretty damn sweet. Meanwhile my crap mitras has browned all your frags quite a bit. Time for radions or t5 looks like lol.

[asylumdown]

aaaaaan since it's gratuitous top down photo day... here's what my fish have to deal with at night. Royal Blue makes my eyes go fuzzy. It explodes my camera sensor

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

Tank is looking great, and very nice coral pics indeed!

Thanks man. There's an art to photographing them and I am no artist that's for sure.

Originally Posted by kien

After seeing your tank, I want to switch to LEDs! Who doesn't want a tank that looks like yours.

Originally Posted by kien

I already have my LEDs on order!

Coming from you that means a lot, I have been aspiring to have a tank like yours for years. And are you serious? What did you get?

Originally Posted by gqlmao

This is one of the few tanks, I've seen in person that shows off how well multiple Radions can grow and color things when used correctly. If my corals grew as fast as yours I would be paying off my tank in frags!

Hahaha! After my first frag sale I'm now only net minus... oh god I don't even want to think about it. The major drawback to multiple radions - no bulk discounts and the number of things that can go wrong with them is multiplied directly by the number of fixtures. If Ecotech comes back to me and says I need to pay to replace the entire light puck on each fixture that has one or more white diode malfunctioning out I don't know what I'm going to do.

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Wow..

thanks man.

Originally Posted by lastlight

Those look quite true to real life. Real life bring pretty damn sweet. Meanwhile my crap mitras has browned all your frags quite a bit. Time for radions or t5 looks like lol.

Nah give it time! It's only been a couple of weeks. I keep hearing that the Mitras is amaze balls. They also have diodes down in the low 400 nm range that is just plain absent from my tank, and I think the whites are a slightly different spectrum, so it's entirely possible this is just those frags getting a suntan for the first time. Each one of my corals went through a tantrum after going in to my tank lasting anywhere from a month, up to a year in the case of my wild colonies from Walt Smith (I think you got frags from a couple of those). They're going to need to adjust for sure. If I were ever to go temporarily insane and replace all of my lights at once I would have a hard time discounting the Mitras, though I've been sooooo tempted by the ATI hybrid. Anyway, I need to stop trying to talk you out of spending money on aquarium equipment lol.

[Doug]

Nice pics. Beautiful corals

[kien]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

Coming from you that means a lot, I have been aspiring to have a tank like yours for years. And are you serious? What did you get?

I ordered a couple of 60" strips of reefbrites to supplement my halides and T5s. :-)

I'm not sure why you would want to change out your LEDs when they appear to be doing so well for you. My tank is OK, but yours is WOW. It has that awesome LED Rave look that mine does not have.

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by kien

I ordered a couple of 60" strips of reefbrites to supplement my halides and T5s. :-)

I'm not sure why you would want to change out your LEDs when they appear to be doing so well for you. My tank is OK, but yours is WOW. It has that awesome LED Rave look that mine does not have.

The sad part about LEDs is that the coral's 'best angle' is always top down, and since I need to climb up on a ladder just to get my hand in the water, it's not an angle I really get to see that often.

I will also say that any notion I had of moving away from these lights has been firmly put to bed. As I mentioned I've been having issues with the white diodes on 5 of my 8 units, and was having a mild heart attack over it as my units are well out of warranty. Ecotech thinks its a problem with the way I installed my TIR lenses and they're taking care of the whole thing as a warranty issue. Consider me a fanboy for life.

[asylumdown]

My roommates are going to Hawaii for Christmas, so Brandon bought a water proof camera. I got to play with it tonight. eek.

While it's MUCH better than an iPhone camera, it still has the same issues with blue washing and white balance due to the LEDs, but I don't care, I just took some awesome photos.

I have neither the time nor patience tonight to try and colour correct them, so here they are as seen from the sensor. I was playing around with the light mode while I was taking them, so these first few were with all channels at 0 except white, which was at 100%:






And these were with the blues on varying levels along with the white, as well as a couple different white balance/exposure settings on the camera. I could spend 2 hours correcting them all, but you get the point.

[asylumdown]

That last one has gone from brown, to white, to blue, to white, to now a the slightest hint of rose. Adapting to LEDs is a journey for some corals. I'm hoping it gets pinker as time goes on.

[asylumdown]

and finally: