Mixed Reef Nano *HYBRID INCOMING*

[Steven Garland]

Tank has been cycling with live rock and live sand for 2 weeks now.

 

[beardedman11]

That looks amazing man. Can’t wait

 

[Steven Garland]

That looks amazing man. Can’t wait

Thanks man dude,me neither.

I have a newer NB Tide coming Tuesday I am going to try and figure out how to mount for supplemental lighting. Idk how in the world I will mount it,but for the price I couldn't pass it up.

I will diffuse it some how to kill the shimmer,since I have so much surface aggiation I already have shimmer from my T5's lol.

 

[eag]

What's the plan for alk stability?

 

[Steven Garland]

What's the plan for alk stability?

If I still go mainly sps,just dosing. No reason dosing couldn't handle element uptake.

 

[Jacked Reefer]

Looking forward to see this system! I've followed all your old builds on NR and this one looks like its gonna be a lot better.

 

[Steven Garland]

Looking forward to see this system! I've followed all your old builds on NR and this one looks like its gonna be a lot better.

Thank you, I appreciate it !!!

 

[eag]

If I still go mainly sps,just dosing

A family member of mine has a tank a bit smaller than yours, and uses a red sea doser. That seems to work out pretty well. It could be difficult to get away with just manual dosing, the small water volume causes alk decline very quickly.

 

[eag]

uses a red sea doser. That seems to work out pretty well

I remember one problem was that it's hard to get dosers that work for this kind of setup (lots of SPS with small water volume). The main thing is that it needs to be dosed regularly, at very small volumes

 

[Steven Garland]

I remember one problem was that it's hard to get dosers that work for this kind of setup (lots of SPS with small water volume). The main thing is that it needs to be dosed regularly, at very small volumes

I had a pico (roughly 2-3 gallons) packed with out 25-30 acro's and weekly water changes and dosing was ample to keep the big 3 at desired levels.

I have no decided if I am going to go full blown sps,or mainly lps and softies with a few acro's yet. Regardless I am not worried about elements and dosing. In 13yrs of reef keeping,I have learned that at first sps will not consume tons of cal,mag,alk until they REALLY start to take off then the consumption starts.

 

[Steven Garland]

So,its been awhile since I have updated the thread. Tank is chugging along,no fish no nothing. Judt letting it run its course before I add anything. Besides some feather dusters and a boat load of pods,there is no other livestock.

I have decided I am going to supplement this t5 light with leds. Idk if I am going to take 2 bulbs out and run a super cluster or leave all 4 bulbs and build a 24" long heatsink and supplement the light that way.

I bought back a toooon of leds and build supplies from @Lingwendil and a few things from @mitten_reef to build this so called hybrid.

I have some 48v psu coming from mitten where I can boost power and the amount of leds I can run. I am thinking a bunch of royals,bunch of uv/violets a couple true blues. Each color on their own channel controlled by a Storm controller.

EDIT: Looks like everything I bought will be here today,instead of tomorrow so tonight I shall tinker.

 

[Steven Garland]

So real quick,this is my first idea on a supplemental puck. I may add a true blue,but there already 2 between the 2 Beam strips.

@mitten_reef I have 3 channels I can work with,more if I use the nanobox ldd board,what do you think ? The Beam strips on 1 channel,violets on a 2nd what should the 3rd be ? Run the 2 Beam channels seperately and violets on their own ?

 

[mitten_reef]

So real quick,this is my first idea on a supplemental puck. I may add a true blue,but there already 2 between the 2 Beam strips.

@mitten_reef I have 3 channels I can work with,more if I use the nanobox ldd board,what do you think ? The Beam strips on 1 channel,violets on a 2nd what should the 3rd be ? Run the 2 Beam channels seperately and violets on their own ?

do you have any white? the nanobox beam don't have any white in them, you're gonna basically end up with all blue-violet... But if you don't care for white, I'd go the beams on one channel, and the violets on their own.

the beam with the 4 lead wires are set up as 2 separate channels in itself, idk how to make them to be one, just FYI. I used to be wired to a 2-ldd board (i.e. 2 wires per ldd channel). It might have something to do with the way the jumper ends are soldered, but i really dunno. same goes for the beam without the wires, you'll at least be able to light up 3 leds on that board, depending on if the peeled off terminal works or not. but the jumper end is also set to accommodate 2 channels there.

 

[Steven Garland]

do you have any white? the nanobox beam don't have any white in them, you're gonna basically end up with all blue-violet... But if you don't care for white, I'd go the beams on one channel, and the violets on their own.

the beam with the 4 lead wires are set up as 2 separate channels in itself, idk how to make them to be one, just FYI. I used to be wired to a 2-ldd board (i.e. 2 wires per ldd channel). It might have something to do with the way the jumper ends are soldered, but i really dunno. same goes for the beam without the wires, you'll at least be able to light up 3 leds on that board, depending on if the peeled off terminal works or not. but the jumper end is also set to accommodate 2 channels there.

Oh yeah,I know this. I am paring this with 2 T5 bulbs. Either B+ & C+ or C+ and GE 6500k.

IIRC I can run the either channel in series with the other and have the channels split up,I have a schematic somewhere where Dave showed me how to split the channels. I habe 3 beam strips,2 are perfect and the other is the one with the messed up thermal runway.

Realistically I have a bunch of 3500-5000k whites,a true blue,cyan,lime and a few other diodes I COULD make a white channel if I wanted to.

So I should be good to run the smaller of the 2 48v supplies since it should only push out whatever voltage it needs to power the array,up to 48v correct ?

 

[mitten_reef]

So I should be good to run the smaller of the 2 48v supplies since it should only push out whatever voltage it needs to power the array,up to 48v correct ?

yeah, as long as you have enough amp in the smaller power supply to satisfy all your LDD (for example, you could run 2 700mA LDD, but not 3, since the power output is up to 2000mA on the small brick). the 48V will handle up to 16 led in one string, so two beam strip in series should be ok.

 

[Lingwendil]

Wasting no time getting those strips Mocked up huh?

I need to start looking into larger heatsinks for my 180 planted build here soon, until you reached out I hadn't touched my LED gear bins for like a year

 

[Steven Garland]

Wasting no time getting those strips Mocked up huh?

I need to start looking into larger heatsinks for my 180 planted build here soon, until you reached out I hadn't touched my LED gear bins for like a year

Heck no,I had to lol. I still need some thermal adhesive and a fan for my heatsink. I have the psu,driver board and stuff all hooked up just need to mount the leds,solder them,wire them and cut the middle 2 reflectors out and she will be ready to blast some light.

Have you looked at HeatsinkUSA ?

 

[Lingwendil]

Yeah, I was looking at heatsinkUSA. Probably going with either them, or some surplus stuff on ebay. the 180 is 72x24x24, and I'm only planning to go for low to moderate lighting, so not going to need too much. Mainly want to size it to not need fans. I'm thinking something like 1.5x6x16 would be plenty per heatsink and worst case some 120mm PC fans can be mounted above them if needed later on.

Plan is three fixtures as the top rim has two center braces, so I can make up a nice rail for mounting all of them and hanging the whole arrangement from some bent conduit. Using Bridgelux Vero or Luxeon Sunplus COBs with some added colors for tuning the overall look, shouldn't need more than 36 volt power supplies and LDD-Ls will work well enough. I'm thinking my own 4UP or 8UP PCBs should be plenty of control, maybe an 8UP board with only 5 or 6 driver positions loaded per fixture will work fine. Since it's freshwater I'm thinking a cool white channel, warm white or amber channel, lime or mint channel to tune the overall perceived brightness, red channel, and a blue and/or cyan channel. Could even strip that down to 4UP boards as I'm not sure I will need to do red with a warm white or amber channel having plenty of red already built in. Kind of going for a warmer "river's edge" sort of look- lighter sand, vertical wood to look like tree roots, and some scattered small to medium pebbles and some moderate creeping and floating plants. Nothing too high maintenance or hard to keep.

Its an AGA reef ready setup with two overflows on the back wall, so it still needs the sump and plumbing figured out first, as well as cleaning off all the featherduster worms and coralline from its former owner's reef setup before I worry too much about lighting.

 

[Steven Garland]

@Lingwendil
That will probably be your best bet,although their shipping if I remember is kinda pricey.

Have you looked into the RapidLed canopies at all ? They might fit the bill perfectly for you.

So wait do you do your own arrays or what ? All those channels should work perfectly though. I want to try pc amber so bad,but have never gotten around to doing it.

This should be good though,are you going to make a thread on here or NR for this tank ?

 

[Lingwendil]

Yeah, I build my own arrays as I like the option to swap individual stars for repair and experiments. Something like the old "evil cluster" from the old NR days is the plan- a single high output COB like a bridgelux Vero surrounded by half a dozen supplementing colors sounds like the simplest plan- the cool white Vero looks very nice over freshwater but even going to a higher CRI like the Luxeon Fresh Fish or Sunplus series may be an option. Then I just add some supporting colors to dial in the look I want, and to get a nice sunrise/sunset fade going. Should be fairly simple to get good results.

I have looked into the pinsinks and canopy ideas from rapid, but I kind of want more area to work on. I think 6x10" is the approximate surface I want at minimum.

Not sure where to put the thread at, since it's freshwater and all the DIY forums for freshwater are pretty dead.