AquaticEngineer

Looks like you have these tanks down!! would like to come by and see them sometime' date=' let me know when this one is up and running[/quote']

 

Hopefully it will be up and running with water in it sometime this week. I gotta clean up a few things, but otherwise everything is where it needs to be.

 

I'll make sure and put up a "Grand Opening of the Damascus Oregon Aquarium" thread when its all ready to go

More plumbing done today, built another auto feeder.

I just have to paint a couple things, move it into place, and level out, then its ready to be filled and start cycling. Last pic shows the new auto feeder I had to make since the plumbing on the other one didn't work with this setup, plus side is the old auto feeder will fit perfect under my small indside coldwater tank

took you for ever!

Took US forever, the 90+ heat yesterday sure didnt make it go any faster.

Water tested and 90% plumbed.

Just gotta get it in place, plumb in the auto feeder, and hook it into the lobster tank now.

Thanks guys

I'm glad it turned out as good as it did.

I read through just about every thread on every forum I could find about spray foam backgrounds, then took the knowledge and info that others had shared and applied the bits that were relevant to what I was doing. A few test pieces, and some experimenting on the side and boom

I'm going to do the same kind of background on my smaller coldwater tank for indoors as well.

Started plumbing the closed loop on this tank now.

Here's some pics of the rock work now that I have it all painted and blended in together.

Got it at Home Depot, its made by Behr called 1 party Epoxy Concrete and Garage Floor Paint. Comes in white and gray, but you can ask them to add color to it if you want. I only comes in 1 gallon buckets though, so if you only need a little bit I have some.

I bought a gallon and divided it into 4 quart containers and had them mix me 4 different colors of gray.

That looks cool Stew' date=' is the foam and all the paint,glue safe for the tank? I assume it is since you're doing it, just seems like alot of stuff going into the water! Anyway looks good cant wait to see it up and running[/quote']

 

The paint is an epoxy based paint so it cures hard and innert.

 

The foam is designed for use in ponds, it is UV resistant and safe for fish.

 

No glue was used, this spray foam is designed to also be used as an adhesive and expands less than other spray foams.

 

Many people haved used the foam and epoxy style backgrounds before, but most have added them into a pre existing tank by building them outside the tank and then placing them into a running system. I decided to just build mine directly into the tank since I got it for free and I needed to hide a bunch of patched over holes in the acrylic.

 

Josh (Drunkreefer) actually gave me the idea to scape it more like it came out as opposed to the flat rock walls that most people make with spray foam. His experience and inspiration came from using spray foam to build vivarium habitats for poison dart frogs. Between the two of us we brainstormed some decent ideas and actually managed to make most of what we tried to do. I even got to try out the idea I had years ago of hiding the closed loop returns in the rock work by utilizing barnacles.

 

A lot of it has been trial and error on building the structures and getting the textures I wanted, now I guess its time to build something nice for inside the house (laugh)

Lookin good. Sorry I did not make it out today. I was down all day with a Migrane...

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.

If you are interested in these units, I can get these in the 10-20k. It is built with heatsink all in one unit like the canon led unit. I didn't import these in because I thought it wasn't a high demand for them.

It also come in the 5,10,20,80,100,200,300 watts. I don't mean to jack your thread, but just want to share some info. I still think you need to add actinic to the 14k 50w unit.

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.

Man' date=' you should look into selling some complete units. I know I'd be down for one. If you need a stock intel CPU heatsink/fan, I have one I'm not using somewhere.[/quote']

 

I thought about building and selling them, but the only way to make the lights reliable enough longterm for me to feel comfortable selling them would be to use a very large heatsink like Ecoxotic uses. Which brings the cost up quite a bit because you need a huge chunk of aluminum for the heatsink at that point. Let me know though if you want me to piece one together for you. I did it for my neighbor for under $80.

 

Yeah I could definately use the heatsink/fan If its not too much to ship it up standard snail mail post let me know and I will reimberse you for the shipping.

 

If you got pics of it that would be great

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.