Lighting

Ok well my last entry was almost two years ago when this site was just getting going. I had posted about my 65g shallow sps reef build. Well about a month after that some things in life happened that changed my reefing plans! First, my wife and I found out that we were pregnant with our second child. Shortly after that news I received a promotion at work which required us to move to a new city. My plans were to get settled and then start my reef build back up again. Well work was crazy and then ...

The right side of the tank:


middle:


left:


obligatory RBTA shot:


Left end of the tank:


Behind the tank in the fish room...


RO/DI setup with sprinkler valve. I did this because my RO/DI whines when the float valve ...

I have run into my first major issue with my reef aquarium. I built my LED Lighting System myself. It consist of 4 independent Meanwell LPC-5-700W Drivers each with 6 LED's (three Cree XP-G R5 Cool White LED's & three Cree XP-E Royal Blue LED's) for a total of 24 LED's with 40 degree reflectors. I originally had the lighting system suspended about 8 inches from the top of the aquarium. My seabed is located 15 inches into the aquarium. This lighting system put out the equivalent of a 250 ...

Now that I have been slowly stocking up on SPS Corals for my aquarium I felt that I didn't have enough lighting. So I placed an order with Rapid LED for two Rapid LED RetroFit Constant Current LED Lighting Kits (I already had two kits from my previous setup). I now have 4 separate Rapid LED RetroFit Constant Current LED Lighting Kit running on 4 Drivers with 6 LED a piece for the equivalent of 250 watts of Meta Halide Lighting. This made such a difference to me. I also still have the ability ...

Time is short, so much to do and so little time.... once again I post about something I did almost a month ago. I almost skipped this one, but, blogs are about sharing experience and I think the pictures will be useful to teach people what NOT to do .

Compĺeted my annual maintenance cleanup... and concluded annual is too long a period to do it .

Before you see the pictures please mind that my refugium is lighted by a non direction compact fluorescent light, ...