Planet 400G Overhang Reef

[skyrne_isk]

Okay, couple updates. Finally chatted with Champion lLghting about my VHO bulbs and their lack of arrival. Apparently the factory is in Europe and hasn’t been keen on producing another run of them due to a lack of demand - this is not a surprise to me. What was a surprise to me is Champion has three 60” actinic 03 in stock. Because they didn’t have the 6 I ordered we were just sitting in limbo. Who knew? Fingers crossed they get here this week.

In my current tank I still have a pair of these - and I think one is starting to switch to male, but Modern Aquatix had one come in and I couldn’t say no.


So these two hopefully will have another friend soon (and yes the current tank is crowded).

 

[oreo54]

Well at least they were honest about it.
That supply demand thing can be brutal .
No ( low) demand no supply.

Add the fragility and shipping it isn't surprising.

 

[skyrne_isk]

Well at least they were honest about it.
That supply demand thing can be brutal .
No ( low) demand no supply.

Add the fragility and shipping it isn't surprising.

I was thinking about pinging you, but there was already a thread where you weighed in on this (but now locked, lol)! In the event I have to switch over the replicating with LED, is this how you would still think about it?

But maybe mix in some amber and green/ cyan?

Here’s the original thread where you posted:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/closest-led-to-old-vho-super-actinics.703715/

 

[oreo54]

I was thinking about pinging you, but there was already a thread where you weighed in on this (but now locked, lol)! In the event I have to switch over the replicating with LED, is this how you would still think about it?

But maybe mix in some amber and green/ cyan?

Here’s the original thread where you posted:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/closest-led-to-old-vho-super-actinics.703715/

One of "those" threads.. :)
A reminder VHO actinic:



and yea I'd add a "something" to add that tinge of "crispness" in the VHO created by the green/amber / blue creating "white".

The "secret" in the look of t5's and really mh's as well is that discreet mercury green spike.
It cannot be emulated in leds. Creates a type of white that you can't create in leds.

As to the "broad" blue area Your choice if you want it more "burple" or more blue".
Just shift the proportions towards blue and away from violet of course.

Think I'd try using a smidge of "mint" ( blue plus lime sort of) and pcamber though I'd need to check some of the new colors by CREE.
Finding DIY leds (not having to do smd mounting) would be difficult.
Pretty sure most of the crees will not be on star boards.

Anyways as much as I personally love cyan I have moved a bit to the add regular blue (460-470) over cyan.
It would be a compromise of sorts.
Cyan and amber along with your "blue" is white.

 

[oreo54]

Upon further review..
Used Raycal to estimate the "not blue" portion and also included "just lime"
Now raycal didn't have exact nm's and I'm only guessing on the ratios of amber/green but it gives me a picture of a possible simple combination. Use just lime and of course any "broad blue/violet spectrum you would like.


From Dana's article the super actinic color ratios.
https://reefs.com/magazine/product-...tinic-white-and-aquasun-high-output-t5-lamps/
I believe the yellow-green and that 1% red is the key to any special "look" over any plain narrow band blue.
similar to the ATI blue plus bulb

This is from Lumileds re. Rebel lime (easy to find at stevesled)
Simple breakdown but telling. All this but eyesight is another story..

 

[skyrne_isk]

Upon further review..
Used Raycal to estimate the "not blue" portion and also included "just lime"
Now raycal didn't have exact nm's and I'm only guessing on the ratios of amber/green but it gives me a picture of a possible simple combination. Use just lime and of course any "broad blue/violet spectrum you would like.

From Dana's article the super actinic color ratios.
https://reefs.com/magazine/product-...tinic-white-and-aquasun-high-output-t5-lamps/
I believe the yellow-green and that 1% red is the key to any special "look" over any plain narrow band blue.

This is from Lumileds re. Rebel lime (easy to find at stevesled)
Simple breakdown but telling. All this but eyesight is another story..

Okay, so if I am following the lime is a decent proxy for the wavelength present in the phosphors’ mercury spike found in halides and (for our purpose) actinic VHOs? And roughy 2.5% of the light coming from an actinic VHO is in this band?

And amber wouldn’t be a bad choice to try and hit the roughly 1.5% coming from yellow/orange/red range?

Tricky part seems like it’s going to be having enough violet and blue diodes to let me barely tickle the lime and red ranges without throwing the ratios way off (by over representation) when adding even just one diode of lime and amber. Haven’t ever built any arrays with different watt diodes together - I know it can be done just a limitation of my knowledge, skills, and abilities.

Thanks for your input my friend.

 

[skyrne_isk]

And speaking of limited electrical skills and abilities, yesterday’s project was getting the Iwaki wired up. This pump will run all the ancillary stuff that today just lives on the main return manifold.

It ain’t pretty but it’ll do.

Before putting the shrink wrap on the last neutral line.


Probably should have electrical taped the lines before shrinking, but there wasn’t a lot of extra space in there to begin with.

 

[oreo54]

Okay, so if I am following the lime is a decent proxy for the wavelength present in the phosphors’ mercury spike found in halides and (for our purpose) actinic VHOs? And roughy 2.5% of the light coming from an actinic VHO is in this band?

And amber wouldn’t be a bad choice to try and hit the roughly 1.5% coming from yellow/orange/red range?

Tricky part seems like it’s going to be having enough violet and blue diodes to let me barely tickle the lime and red ranges without throwing the ratios way off (by over representation) when adding even just one diode of lime and amber. Haven’t ever built any arrays with different watt diodes together - I know it can be done just a limitation of my knowledge, skills, and abilities.

Thanks for your input my friend.

You have 4.65% "not blue".. :)
The ease of dimming leds is what you would rely on.
You "sort of" start at 3 "blues" to 1 lime (amber, whichever one prefers)
And using watts as a proxy for %'s ..
Say you run the 3 blues at 750mA (not uncommon) and their v(f) is around 3 so 6.75 watts
1 "other" at say 350mA (same v(f)) is 1.05w
13.4% "not blue" run it at 40% and you are in the "4.65%" range.
Yea a lot of wasted potential but leds are relatively cheap.
Even the high quality ones. PC amber are $1.99 each.

Nice little primer on colors:
https://www.nano-reef.com/forums/topic/352618-led-colors-and-what-they-are-used-for/#comment-4859078

 

[skyrne_isk]

Found a long package on the porch this evening.

And when I opened it up it felt like getting contraband or something!


But when I opened it up, it didn’t have 12 tubes like the box said or the three that Champion said they had available - it had all 6 I originally ordered. At this point I am not asking any questions, lol.

 

[skyrne_isk]

Remember how I said I wasn’t much of a an electrician? I got the end caps wired and mounted for VHOs and only one bulb would flicker on then nothing.

I swapped a bulb out, checked the fuse, reseated the wires in the end caps thinking a dodgy connection - nothing.

I eventually got the wiring diagram out and couldn’t believe I ran the lines wrong! I used a yellow jumper wire between the two bulbs on the right end with one each of yellow from the ballast instead of two pair on each bulb (basically orange wasn’t wired up to anything). Thankfully, this mistake was made on the ballast end of the end caps so I didn’t have to repull everything. More embarrassing is I’m pretty sure I posted the diagram a couple pages back.

Probably got in the mode of wiring up the pattern on the T5s and forgot that VHOs take a bigger inrush of current to fire. Lazy

I didn’t glue any of the PVC conduit - so that part was easy enough. You can see orange is just hanging out.


It was a pain to make the 90 degree turns, but not impossible.


All back together.

Underside of the canopy, all dialed in.



Like Christmas!

 

[skyrne_isk]

Today’s project:

I bought an 8 bulb ATI Sunpower from another reefer for parts. Six months ago or so it was harder than I thought it would be to find the HEP 2 x 80W ballasts I needed for this build.

So took that guy apart today.




Got the 4 ballasts out no problem.



In other news I finished getting the swallowtail out of QT and into the display. Hard to get a pic with all three in the same frame - but the new female is on the right.



I don’t like to take fish through QT by themselves. Not sure if it’s correlation and causation, but my theory is it can be easier to get everybody eating when there’s more than one dish together as your odds go up that at least one fish will feed and then the others will take note and figure it out. Anyway, I didn’t have any issues getting the masked swallowtail to eat but did send get this guy to be her buddy in there. Such a common fish, but still underrated IMO. Very pretty.

 

[skyrne_isk]

I got this text Friday from my LFS:

So we’ve got only a couple weeks left and the overhang reef will be here!

 

[skyrne_isk]

I made good progress on getting the lighting canopy mounted and hung over the last week.

For the mounting hardware in the ceiling I went with these guys:

https://a.co/d/06eSJ1mM


The hardware a couple pages back only mounted through one screw into the ceiling - which is great from a minimalism perspective, but not great from a failure prevention perspective. This mounting hardware allowed for two screws to hold in the drywall but still gave a finished look. In my last build I simply used screw eyelets into the ceiling which were…. fine.

These operate under a tension principle and make adjustments really easy to level. Here is the first one mounted.

I didn’t exactly trust the mechanism to hold up indefinitely, so I crimped a stop onto the wire that should make it near impossible to fail. The only tradeoff is that I cannot lengthen the cable from the ceiling, but I’m not going to be getting up there anyway.

The wall the light is anchored to is not load bearing and has studs at 24 on center. I didn’t have a TV mount with a base wide enough that would hit each stud. My preference was not to use toggle bolts or drywall anchors, so I cut and painted a mounting board to match the trim in the room hit both studs and then bolted the TV mount to that.

A couple pages back, I showed how I sunk threaded inserts into the canopy and lined them up with holes in the TV mount. That part worked like a charm and made connecting the mount to the canopy super easy. Here’s the finished product.

I wanted at least two of the bolts to go all the way through the wood so I used cap head screws on those that are a little larger diameter. I don’t know if tear out was a real risk, but didn’t want to find out. Here you can see what the backside looks like. It’s all stainless, so I should be OK if I need to take them out later.

Anchored at the other end of the canopy, a ferule is crimped to make sure a catastrophic failure doesn’t drop the canopy on the tank.


And here’s how the lighting canopy looks mounted in the room, you can almost see things starting to take shape!

I have always had a TV mount on one side of my canopy, and I really prefer it. It allows a little bit of resistance to keep the canopy where it gets positioned. So if you need to push it aside to do maintenance, you can easily do it and then just pull it back to where you need it when you’re done. I find it convenient.