AquaticEngineer

Okay, this is a PNWMAS only special, this will not be advertised on my craigslist add. Hopefully this will inspire someone to take the plunge into coldwater like me PRICE DROP TO $475 If you had been debating on buying this from me and you were on the edge hopefully this will push you over.

Haven't tried it over any corals yet, still wiring it up and testing it out.

Wanted to give a heads up to anyone wanting to go tide pooling. I have 1 more seat available in my Jeep for the my collecting trip on the Wednesday April 20th. We will be leaving the Portland area around 5am so that we can be near Oceanside by about 7am. Low point for the tide that day is at 9:15 so we should have a good solid 2hrs of the outgoing lowest tides to collect in.

That was one of the reasons I liked these as well, I didnt want to have to solder an entire array of 3w LEDs. With this light I will have a total of 2 solder points and 2 wire nuts and I am done.

Thought I would share the LED lens and reflector I'm going to use on my 50w setup. Its a 60 degree angle lens and reflector shipped for under $6. I still need to find an adequate housing for everything, but it will probably be an aluminum tube or something unless we just keep it as a retro fit. http://cgi.ebay.com/10W-20W-100W-LED-Lens-Reflector-Collimator-50mm-Base-/360357692501?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item53e6fe0455&autorefresh=true

Thought I'd update this with a video showing the tank in action. That way those of you that have shown interest dont have to drive all the way out unless you really want to http://s246.photobucket.com/albums/gg100/Stuwobbe/Coldwater%20tanks/?action=view&current=VID_20110407_235306.mp4

Thats just for this one as a test bulb to see if I can get the same penetration as a halide. They sell 12K and 20K versions of these LEDs for around $50 shipped. You could also just add blue T-5's or LED's to supplement the color unless you wanted to run a single fixture in which case I would just go to a 12k or 20k.

The whole reason I looked into these was because I needed a light that would penetrate down into a 48" deep tank and not put off too much heat like a halide does. Also the cost savings in lighting is nice

I'd imagine with one of these lights you could grow SPS on the sand bed down to 30", lol. I will know better for sure in a day or two though what the par rating is at different depths. My friend that helped fund this experiment is getting a PAR meter so we can check this out and do a side by side par rating against a 250W halide he has setup. It'll also help quite a bit once I get the optics over it to concentrate the light.

Yeah they do, this is the one I'm going to try out. 60 DEGREE OPTIC ON EBAY FOR $12 SHIPPED

That was wired up without even any thermal conductive grease inbetween the LED and heatsink, so once I get some of that on there and add a fan and a piece of aluminum to mount it on, I should be able to run it as long as I need to. Its all a matter of dissipating the heat.

Heres a video for you all

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD. I just got the heat sink today for the 50w LED setup, so I wired it up and gave it a test. I think I have retinal damage. I'll have a video up shortly.

Okay, if someone buys this tank from me before the 20th they can have a free ride with me and my buddy to Oceanside when we go collecting and I will hold onto anything you find until your tank is ready. And you can still have some strawberry anemones, and maybe some other stuff too

I have a ton of snail shells, they aren't really "tiny" though. If you want em they are yours, my starfish go through about a 1 lb a month. I think they are about an inch around each.

Thats exactly what made me want to do a large display tank in my house

Hey let me know when your ready, I'll keep an eye out for a deal on a lobster tank for you guys (rock2)

Muuuuuuhhaahahhah, come over to the Dark Side (devil) Its nice and cool this time of year.

NEXT TRIP INFO: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I thought I would throw out this idea for anyone who may in the future want to go with me when I go tidepool collecting. I figure we all have access to the tide tables and know when good times to go would be, so I'll work on posting up times of minus tides and locations of where I'll be going and when. That way there will be multiple times so it can work around peoples lives and schedules. So if you want to plan to come with me and share on gas, or are thinking about starting a coldwater tank just post up in here and get it going

I run my lights for maybe an hour at most a day when I'm feeding the tank and working on it and I have not once had to wipe algae off the glass of my tank in almost a year. I also keep a lot of live snails in the tank for the Ochre stars to feed on, and I also have a 5" abalone.

I'm doing LEDS also Right now on my 110 I have a single waterproof LED strip light that gives me more than enough light to see whats going on. When I do my display tank I'm either going to using tight optics with a couple PAR38/PAR30 bulbs, or do a homemade 50w led spotlight I'm working on

I am running a water proof LED light strip on the inside lip of the tank since I didnt want a lot of light on the tank and I didnt want to add anything over the tank to ruin the streamlined look. Nope, cant run fine partical substrates in these systems. They have an upflow from the bottom and have a lower false bottom that houses the chiller coil. Smallest you could do is probably dime size rocks and larger which is what I'm running. My tank will mostly be a rocky shore biotope I guess it would be considered. Hey no problem, I actually have a ton of pictures and some videos of my tank up and running. If you want to see them just follow this link to my photobucket album: COLDWATER TANK ALBUM Or if your up north anytime soon let me know and you can just come and check out everything in person

This one has a total water volume of 110 gallons. I think I did the geometry on the tank dimensions and the usable tank area minus the overflow is about 86 gallons.