Well yes. I've been asked a few times now and it's true. I got new lights for the 55g.
Thank goodness. Now both tanks match.
I got three ai sols last year about this time and set em on the tank canopy. Two Sol white and one blue in the middle.
I had cut holes in the canopy to fit each light, and closed it from the bottom with 3/8 acrylic. Then I put a thin sanded acrylic under the lights to diffuse them.
The sols are are 12x6 and the new lights are 8x 16 , soooo...power tools.
I don't want these to sit inset, as it makes the canopy weaker, but also to make the diffusion seperate from the light , and give it more spread.
Those are the old ai diffusions, I might make bigger ones, but I have rolls and rolls of diffusions at home I want to play with. Besides a nice hot shimmery blast might look cool with the soft light. I ask my self, what would Storaro do?
And yea. That I have the potential to boil water with these on a 55 at 8in. But I'm a coverage freak and like the look. I have leds almost over the entire length and width of the tank..
I had planned on hooking all these up on a controller , but I'm much better at meter info lights than building them.
Ugg.
What do all these wires do?!?!!!!
Lol.
I did put together a jumper for the power so it powers all the lights and only uses one cable. And a second wire to carry signal and power too so I only have two cables on the head, and each light will only have a couple of plugs to undo if I have to remove it.
Well , the hardware and wiring and carpentry were pretty easy, but the learning curve of dimming circuits was well.....umm.
So I got these high tech controllers until I figure that out.
I got them from ikea labs, a Swedish outfit, if you'd like to purchase some.
So here they are on the tank. Insert excuses for spaghetti here.
I'm already planning to lose the wires from the top, I though it would be ok but.... no.
I'll move them to come out the back with the control cable.
With the Ais I was running 32000 lux as a peak on a long ramp cycle with the peak for six hours. So with the new light and (ahem) new controllers I want to start lower , and will be running a longer time.
My guess is about 2ok lux.
It literally took two minutes to do. But as I looked at the tank I didn't really like the blue level. So I dialed it back. Fwiw , in my cube I run at a 1:1 W/B ratio. A little warm for some folks , but hey. My tank.
Here's where it got interesting. At about 26k lux, and my color choice, I noted the ratio. Whites at 20% and blue at 1%.
Oh my.
So with the diffusionand both knobs at full, I get 40,000 lux. At 1% I get 20%.....well thank goodness in had been doing some reading. Dimmers are inefficient. So it is not truly 1% of the light output, it is one% of the dimmer range. Well Duh.
So liking the color and after questioning everything I know , both of them, I pulled out the color meter and the Lux meter. At24k ish lux total, the white was 16k and the blue
Was 10k ish.... the color meter has the whites at about 9,000(I'll test again farther away later) and the blue naturally gave me an error as it overloaded the sensor. So both by eye and meter I'd guess I'm running just under 20k. 14-16 probably. Maybe. I think.
Now I do wonder , as folks are running these at like 30w and 70 blue, what the heck??? BLUE....lol.
No wonder folks have a hard time taking pictures under them.
So here it is , my settings. 20% white, 1% blue.
I like it.
That's raw iPhone , no correction. The color you see in the pictures are pretty close what you see in real life.
Where's my peeps? @Katrina71 @happyhourhero @ReeferMadness80G @Robin Haselden @Scurvy @Michael Montgomery @mcarroll I know I'm forgetting a ton.
A special shout out to @reeferfoxx for putting up with stupid led questions and @Ranjib for walking me though the process. I'm still working on it. Lol.
Thanks to Matt @BoomCorals for the deal on the lights to make it happen ,And @sbreeflights for making pretty darn good lights and trading me for the third light(I got light ,Mike got pay pal)
And hey Freddie @GoVols , I got some Black box Koolaide if you wanna taste!
Thank goodness. Now both tanks match.
I got three ai sols last year about this time and set em on the tank canopy. Two Sol white and one blue in the middle.
I had cut holes in the canopy to fit each light, and closed it from the bottom with 3/8 acrylic. Then I put a thin sanded acrylic under the lights to diffuse them.
The sols are are 12x6 and the new lights are 8x 16 , soooo...power tools.
I don't want these to sit inset, as it makes the canopy weaker, but also to make the diffusion seperate from the light , and give it more spread.
Those are the old ai diffusions, I might make bigger ones, but I have rolls and rolls of diffusions at home I want to play with. Besides a nice hot shimmery blast might look cool with the soft light. I ask my self, what would Storaro do?
And yea. That I have the potential to boil water with these on a 55 at 8in. But I'm a coverage freak and like the look. I have leds almost over the entire length and width of the tank..
I had planned on hooking all these up on a controller , but I'm much better at meter info lights than building them.
Ugg.
What do all these wires do?!?!!!!
Lol.
I did put together a jumper for the power so it powers all the lights and only uses one cable. And a second wire to carry signal and power too so I only have two cables on the head, and each light will only have a couple of plugs to undo if I have to remove it.
Well , the hardware and wiring and carpentry were pretty easy, but the learning curve of dimming circuits was well.....umm.
So I got these high tech controllers until I figure that out.
I got them from ikea labs, a Swedish outfit, if you'd like to purchase some.
So here they are on the tank. Insert excuses for spaghetti here.
I'm already planning to lose the wires from the top, I though it would be ok but.... no.
I'll move them to come out the back with the control cable.
With the Ais I was running 32000 lux as a peak on a long ramp cycle with the peak for six hours. So with the new light and (ahem) new controllers I want to start lower , and will be running a longer time.
My guess is about 2ok lux.
It literally took two minutes to do. But as I looked at the tank I didn't really like the blue level. So I dialed it back. Fwiw , in my cube I run at a 1:1 W/B ratio. A little warm for some folks , but hey. My tank.
Here's where it got interesting. At about 26k lux, and my color choice, I noted the ratio. Whites at 20% and blue at 1%.
Oh my.
So with the diffusionand both knobs at full, I get 40,000 lux. At 1% I get 20%.....well thank goodness in had been doing some reading. Dimmers are inefficient. So it is not truly 1% of the light output, it is one% of the dimmer range. Well Duh.
So liking the color and after questioning everything I know , both of them, I pulled out the color meter and the Lux meter. At24k ish lux total, the white was 16k and the blue
Was 10k ish.... the color meter has the whites at about 9,000(I'll test again farther away later) and the blue naturally gave me an error as it overloaded the sensor. So both by eye and meter I'd guess I'm running just under 20k. 14-16 probably. Maybe. I think.
Now I do wonder , as folks are running these at like 30w and 70 blue, what the heck??? BLUE....lol.
No wonder folks have a hard time taking pictures under them.
So here it is , my settings. 20% white, 1% blue.
I like it.
That's raw iPhone , no correction. The color you see in the pictures are pretty close what you see in real life.
Where's my peeps? @Katrina71 @happyhourhero @ReeferMadness80G @Robin Haselden @Scurvy @Michael Montgomery @mcarroll I know I'm forgetting a ton.
A special shout out to @reeferfoxx for putting up with stupid led questions and @Ranjib for walking me though the process. I'm still working on it. Lol.
Thanks to Matt @BoomCorals for the deal on the lights to make it happen ,And @sbreeflights for making pretty darn good lights and trading me for the third light(I got light ,Mike got pay pal)
And hey Freddie @GoVols , I got some Black box Koolaide if you wanna taste!
