AquaticEngineer

No worries, take care of yourself and hit me up on wednesday I'll have the day off

Yay for labor day I managed to get everything done but the paint on the rock work. The tank is sitting in the front of the garage sun drying so I can start painting later tonight when it cools off. There's three bulk head returns for the closed loop in the above picture

I picked up a new heatsink/fan combo off an old AMD setup from goodwill for $2.99 yesterday, best part is it fits perfectly inside the light housing I wanted to use FishKiler, I am definitely going to use one of the thermal switchs this time, thanks again for the link I pulled up the running temps for the light last time I had it going full on. The surface temp of the bulb was 118F, and the heatsink was 130F after a 30 minute run time. I think I am going to buy a thermal switch that is at 50C ( 122F) and one that is at 55C (131) and hopefully with the more effective heatsink and fan this time around the light wont even get up to 130F.

That's awesome I had thought of doing something similar but back burnered the idea. I'll be working on the tanks and lights this weekend, shoot me a pm.

Whats the price on a 50w unit? I have a couple par38s that have actinic, and I was thinking of rebuilding my 50 watter to go over my kelp bed.

Only thing to look for that I am aware of is the PAR levels. If those are close to the same as your metal halide readings at the same tank depth then your good. Spectrum is mostly for our own visual color preferences. Only downfall I had with these lights was finding a reliable heatsink/fan combo for a good price. I finally decided that if I rebuild this I'll use a larger CPU heatsink/fan combo. I will probably set this back up over the kelp bed in my coldwater tank since it puts out par equivelent to a 250w MH but can be focused with optics to project all the light downwards at a single area. A super tight optic, like a 15 degree, would also allow me to have my light hung roughly 6 feet away from the tank and still put the same amount of light into the same area. Also, since I can get the light output of MH but without the amount of heat created by a MH, I'll be going with LEDs over all my tanks soon. The cost savings starts to really show on a coldwater tank since your chillers dont have to counteract the heat produced by your light source. But in response, yes it is too good to be true. Unless that is, you are willing to take the time to search for the parts seperately (which makes it even more cost effective) and build something like this yourself. If you wanted a 50w LED stand alone light right now without building it yourself, your only option is the 50w Cannon LED Pendant made by Ecoxotic..............for around $499, give or take. The technology is there, the Chinese are making it cost effective, the information is readily availble on the internet, resisitance is futile.

We were going to go today, but decided not to. I had a bunch of stuff to do around the house, and the tide was only a -.7 that bottomed out around 6:30 am. So we only would have had maybe an hour of daylight with the tide going out, and then a little while of it coming in. I'm going to look at the tide tables and plan something a little further out that works better.

I would have but its a little out of the way for me, lol. I hit the Damascus store, the Woodstock store, and the Gresham store. So there should be some left out there for you

Bi-mart sells it for $4.39 a can, they just bumped up their price to $4.69 a can. Its probably because I bought everyone of them on the shelf at 3 locations within a week, lol. Its the best price I found on it anywhere, even cheaper than buying it online. Its called Touch N' Foam pond and stone I think.

Will do I just got the overflows finished and in place today, still gotta foam over them though. So once I finish this last bit of foam and paint it will time to plumb it up and get water going.

(laugh)Doesn't look like I'll have any problems with adhesion of the spray foam

You can do the heatsink and fan combo for as low as $4.99. If you wanted passive cooling by a heatsink without a fan it would be a bit more expensive because you would need a much larger heatsink.

They make dimmable drivers for these already, I thought about getting one but my driver was still functional after the burnout so I didnt bother. The spread I was getting was with a 60 degree optic, so If you wanted your light more out of the way you could go with a 30 degree optic and get the same results from a greater height. As for output, they put plenty of PAR out, its mostly whether or not you like the color they produce. You can find these LED's in anywhere from 3000k - 20000k, but you'll pay for the higher kelvin ones. I was pretty happy with the color of the 6500k. It was very true white light.

You could definately light that tank with one and do it for cheap. I still have all of my stuff for mine, but I fried the LED when the fan went out. My advice if you want to build one is go with as large and reliable a fan and heatsink as you can find. These high output LEDs produce a lot of heat that needs to be dissipated, so if you are running an undersized heatsink( like I did) and your fan goes out then your LED will burn up in a matter of hours. Honestly the best heatsink/fan combo you could get for cheap would be something inteded to cool a high end laptop processor. I found em used at Goodwill for under $5. For you your sized frag tank you may also want to explore slightly less wattage LEDs like the single 30w, 20w, or even a 10w. The optics for all of these sized chips are the same as well.

Pics after doing more paint last night.

All depends on the type of tank your setting up "Live" Rock for my coldwater tank is anything but. Its so solid that the only life on it is literally on the surface. The foam rock wall I made in this tank will probably harbor more beneficial bacteria on it and in it than any rock I could harvest myself (laugh) QFT. I did this in my coldwater tank because the aquascaping possiblitys are pretty minimal with the native granite rocks. So this will allow me to aquascape more vertically without trying to stack boulders on top of eachother. It also takes up far less space than stacking rock against the back, gives me more real estate to attach anemones and such to, and doesn't allow my fairly shy fish like my Sarcastic Fringehead to just hide under or behind a rock. I also have yet to see a reef tank with a decent enough foam wall to make me want to copy it. Everything I did was based of of copying techniques used in public aquriums and zoos to make displays as opposed to the "Great Stuff and crushed coral" walls most people do in tropical tanks. I figured it was worth a try since I got the tank for free, and I only spent $60 on spray foam. I've spent more on a single liverock for my tropcial tanks (laugh)

I finished up the spray foam on the intake for the closed loop and got the rest of the rock salt off last night and finished painting. All I need to do now is get that large piece in the last picture secured and blended into the rest of the wall and a little more touch up paint. Then its on to laying the concrete pad to level it out in the garage, then start plumbing it up

Gots some more work done on the spray foam rock work, thought I'd share Still gotta hose off all the rock salt and let it soak to get the rest off. Then some highlights with gray 1 part epoxy paint to make everything look like the last picture.

Pics of some of the livestock that was out and ready to be photographed today Grunt Sculpin looking like a barnacle, couple corynactis. Orange Plumose Striped sunflower star Larger of my Snailfish, of course its the ugly brown one not the cool yellow one that comes out. Northern Kelp Crab Fringed Tube Worm Colonie - Dodecaceria fewkesi

That was from back in my wild days, before wife and kids.

Sweet, its probably in one of the buckets still.

Tiger Pods are breeding already Got em seperated into 2 small acrylic tanks in the North facing window and another shallow tank growing out the algae. I need a small brine net so I can start slimming the colonies out and feed em to the tanks.

Yeah no doubt.