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Madmikes looooooong 375 gallon (12 foot) DIY build thread


madmike

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ATI sunpower T5 lighting. 2 of the 6x80 watt five foot fixtures.

 

Open house will need to wait until I get everything finished. The rock and corals were just threw in from the sump, I still need to aquascape and organize all of the wiring. Also, I have some more plumbing to do as I am swapping out my reeflo orca 250 for a new octopus xp-5000 cone skimmer.

 

Mike

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks everyone.... Finally got around to aquascaping the tank, what do you think?

 

Full tank shot

fullfront1of1.jpg

 

view from long side

sidefront1of1.jpg

 

right island

rightisland1of1.jpg

 

middle island

middleisland1of1.jpg

 

left island

leftisland1of1.jpg

 

I just received some royal blue and cool white cree LEDs so I am going to be experimenting with flanking the sunpowers with dimable LEDs to tweak color and get some shimmer.

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i was wondering what kind of fish those r? are they angles by chance they r sweet! nice size fish for your tank.

 

Are you talking about the yellow and white? If so they are pyramid butterflys, relatively reef safe for the butterfly family. There is a pair of bellus angels in the tank also.

 

Mike

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I got the first LED strip finished this week to go along side my ATI sunpower fixtures for shimmer actinic control. I used an aluminum U channel I bought at home depot and affixed the stars with thermal tape.

led21of1.jpg

 

I used a meanwell dimmable driver and have it connected to a POT that can dim the entire set. Soon my apex will arrive and I am going to put them on a sunrise/sunset ramp up/down before the actinics on the ATIs fire, it will give me more hours of viewing without stressing out the corals too much. This is a pic of just the LEDs, no ATI.

led1of1.jpg

 

The fixtures are only about 6-8 inches above the water surface, so splashing was definitely going to be a problem. I found a square acrylic tube from Tap plastics that fits on the U channel perfectly once I sliced off one side on my table saw. You can see the acrylic splash guard here.

led11of1.jpg

 

I have already ordered the items to replicate the fixture and will be putting the white/blue on separate meanwells so they can be dimmed separately.

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i'm going to start with 80 degree optics and go from there. I cant go too tight as my leds are spaced over 3 inches apart from each other, tight optics would be like spotlights.

 

Dan, Im not quite sure its a big difference with the T5s on. My wife says she notices a big difference but I am more skeptical. I can see some shimmer, but nothing like a metal halide. I can see if you had more of these in a dense formation the shimmer produced would be just like MH. I am basically going to use them so I can start viewing the tank much earlier than previously. My current setup has the T5s on at 2:30 and off at 10pm but with this setup, I can turn these on at 10am and off at 11 or midnight because they produce a nice color for viewing and add NO heat to the tank. There isn't enough light with only 12 of these per side to have a negative effect on the corals like bleaching from having such a long photoperiod.

 

I wouldn't hesitate on doing a fixture for a smaller tank as the only light source. I think the technology is finally there, the price is a different story. It would cost 2-3 thousand to light my tank solely with LEDs. In a location with high electrical costs these could be economically feasible. Here in the Pnw with cheap electricity, I don't know if that could be said.

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  • 2 months later...

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