Bombertech

I still think the dropoff edge is a great idea, just saying!!

I'm going to speculate here and say first assumption is the Lime peak on the T5's. Not good for growth but it does kick the yellows/orange FP's. Ask what bulb layout he's running, would be curious to see if the bulbs have the lime parasitic peak (most do)...

Indeed, sunset monti can get way nicer looking than that.

This'll be a fun one!

Jeremy is right on the money! Put in a valve on the current return line to use as a siphon drain, use the existing drain line as the emergency drain. If it was me, I'd use a gate valve on the siphon drain.

Just curious because I was talking with a friend the other day about it, what is this LED shadowing complaint I keep hearing everywhere? Disco Shadowing? Lack of defined shadow edges?

I have some extra hydro trays but they are 96x48's. Hydro trays are tricky, you need to cover them and insulate the bottom or the temperature drops fast, You'll also need to plumb it into something else (you said your dad has a 180? Perfect!) or you will have temperature fluxuations. You should be able to pick up a 48x24 tray for $35 from a decent grow store. PM me if you need remote help on setup. Here are a couple pics of the cover I cut for mine.

Bingo! When determining sump turnover all you need is enough flow to maintain temperature in your main tank. 4x is plenty from sump. Get the rest from powerheads.

The ball type are typical of industrial piping. They work great and you don't have to worry about making a bad seal which causes the check flap to oscillate. I had that happen on my old setup a couple times, again, why we drill siphon breaks or set a nozzle near surface level. If your sump capacity is undersized you can always take into consideration water height on your overflow weir teeth. Lower return flow (if practical) can make 1/2"-3/4" water difference and keep you in the tank. Siphon breaks are a biggie too.

Haha, your post showed up while I was typing mine. You have the controller, you might as well automate failure switchover if you are going to do it When automating a spare, also remember to equalize run times. So program in a manual switchover, or a scheduled (for instance: every other Monday at 9am). One other idea: If you pipe in the intake of each pump seperately and your overflow can handle the additional flow, look into the feasibility of running both for 15-30 minutes once a week as an "autoclean" function. Crank your flow and stir everything up.

It depends on the application, but the dart is going to be louder for sure. most of my stuff runs in the garage so I'm not concerned about noise. I helped Shutterfish set up his DC return pump with the design priorities being overflow safety and noise. His tank was set up with a Herby drain, and we put in an internal DC pump with spa flex coupling for vibration reduction. A few nice features of running internal are noise dampening, heat recovery from the pump, and ease of replacement. If you want to set up a lead/standby pump you run both pumps in parallel with a check valve on the high side of each pump then pipe back together on both sides. To know if the pump failed you can do a few different things: Pump current transducer (CT) on the power wire for current status. When the pump stalls out, the current drops enough to de-energize the CT. Flow switch or pressure switch on the high pressure side to determine if you have pump pressure Sump high level switch which tells you the pump may be off, so switch to the standby. In reef tanks, the high sump level makes the most sense. Flow switches for saltwater applications are hard to find or expensive. CT's are better suited for larger pumps (1/8HP and greater).

Redundant pumps are a great way to go! make sure to put a check on each one. You can do lead/lag, lead/standby, running spare, etc. Personally, I like the reeflo pumps due to servicability and the baldor motors are VFD rated. Keeping head pressure down with good plumbing practice/limited height difference keeps the GPW (Gallons per Watt) competitive on the hybrid pumps.

Haha, polypro/or plastic core ply, alternate direction every other layer.

Sumps in the garage have some special requirements. I cover everything to lower humidity and run a DIY polypropylene air to air heat exchanger for ventilation air. I packed the underside of all tanks with bubble packing.

My old sump system for my 6G Fluval edge when it was set up.

I gave John the Fluke Multimeter I had at the May Meeting for Club use, talk to him if you want to check it out. The diode check function works awesome for testing LEDs. Let me know if you have questions on the operation of the meter.

Be careful with the pond baskets, the mold release used releases phosphates and can lead to an algae bloom on the basket itself. I was actually talking to Garrett about that yesterday after the meeting. in a large system it's not a big deal but i would be careful in anything less than 100 gallons.

Thanks! Was fun! Always building something new. But, I did ponder the comment "well you must of liked the result of the first fixture", nope, still LOVE it!! It's moved 3 times, over 4 different tanks, has 8 seperate power supplies (random power supplies from WIFI routers, etc) and 10 dimmers (PWM dimmers for PC fans), and was build from stuff I had laying around in the garage (seriously, everything but the leds themselves). It takes a dedicated power strip to run, ah, good times. In all seriousness, over the numerous prototypes I've learned a lot. It all comes down to the day I almost tossed my commercial LED fixtures in the trash to go back to T5 but decided to solve the problem instead.

Ahrg!! Always a bummer to hear!

Thanks everyone for the warm hospitality! Garrett had an excellent spread of both edible and non-edibles (other than those that like palytoxin). Always nice to get a chance to meet new faces. Kudos to the Andrews for making the trip from Bend as well! Had a great time! There was a lot of information to cover in an hour so I hope it was usable, handouts always help! Talking with John and Bert a few months back, we all share the common goal of having more hands-on learning demos/classes in the future. As a hobby, we pioneered everything through trial and error until the larger market trends took over and told us what we wanted which was more or a one size fits all. it made it easy but took away a lot of the knowledge. A few classes I would like to see in the future below (a lot to do with those newer to the hobby but i think there are enough tips/tricks floating out there between all of us to be worthy of consolidating and presenting. I'd say these would be well suited for a few members to collaborate on and present. -Plumbing Technique and Best Practices (low pressure drop, redundancy, good maintenance practice, etc) -Pest/Disease Reduction and diagnosis (Dipping/Treatment/etc. This is a big one after talking with a few members about frag swaps) -Dosing/Reactors (2-Part, aminos, carbon, etc) -Energy Management (pump selection, flow rates, lighting times, heaters, etc) -Glass or Acrylic Tank/Sump Build -Zoa Care Tips/Tricks (There are a lot of us that have our tricks/tips, would be awesome to consolidate and pass on to the people starting to dive into keeping the designer zoas).

We'll go over that in the meeting

So long as there is school involved, sounds great! I look forward to seeing what the year brings.

Excellent! We'll be going over how to take an old lame blue/white D120 and trick it out to one's liking. I'll bring a soldering iron for running through techniques as well.

Hopefully it works well for you!

What are you looking for? A few of us already have the majority of the zoas he sells.