5 Feet, 110 Gallons of Fun

[bauder1986]

Now this is a proper DIY! Good on you for not using a grinder to clean up your welds but really good on you for building this unit yourself! This is on serious light fixture now! I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up being stuck at less than 30% power on those lights.

[cvrle1]

Originally Posted by bauder1986

Now this is a proper DIY! Good on you for not using a grinder to clean up your welds but really good on you for building this unit yourself! This is on serious light fixture now! I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up being stuck at less than 30% power on those lights.

Thanks. I didnt dare use a grinder or anything of sort. I figured I would make it a lot worse than it is, so I just left it be. I may end up not using 2 outside lights right away, or maybe have the 3 middle ones on higher power, and 2 outside ones on lower. Once I get into SPS and more demanding light corals I can play around with power of all 5 units to get optimal results.

[bauder1986]

I recommend finding a par meter or finding someone in the hobby that's local in the hobby with one to come on by and help you set the power on the lights. It's surprising how little you need when it comes to LEDs. It's good you have that many LED fixtures though. That just means that you can run them all at a lower power together. With LEDs, the lower the power you can run them at to make happy coral, the lower their heat is. And the lower the heat on the lights, the longer they last.

[cvrle1]

I have Seneye reef, so I will be using it as PAR meter. Main reason i bought it really haha. I have one more fixture actually, but wasnt going to cram 6 of them in. I was playing around with idea of doing 2 rows of 3, but figured it would still be an overkill for this size of tank. Like you said, I would rather run them at lower power and keep heat down a bit more, as well as possibly extend life of fixtures, as they are not running at high power and producing less heat

[bauder1986]

Use the 6th fixture on a frag tank! Every display needs a lil frag tank plumbed in too haha

[cvrle1]

Originally Posted by bauder1986

Use the 6th fixture on a frag tank! Every display needs a lil frag tank plumbed in too haha

I was thinking about that, but frag tank would have to be a whole separate tank for itself. I dont have room for frag tank close to the DT. I have a tank already for it, but need to figure out if I can keep frag tank running during winter, as it will have to be in the garage, and there is no heat there. It's a small 30ish gallon tank, so few larger heaters should be able to get the job done, but not sure if it is a smart idea. 1st I need to finish with this build, then I can think about frag tanks haha.

I also have a 165W Viparspectra unit hat I originally was going to use on this build (2-3 of them) but then got great deal on these lights. So I was going to re-purpose VS for frag tank.

[bauder1986]

Originally Posted by cvrle1

I also have a 165W Viparspectra unit hat I originally was going to use on this build (2-3 of them) but then got great deal on these lights. So I was going to re-purpose VS for frag tank.

Well now we know where all the lights in the market went....