LED Powered 1 gal Pico

[.Newman.]

you mean the actual LEDs get hot? like the bulb part? thats not really supposed to happen, maybe the wiring is off?

 

I wired the so that there is a wire on the opposite side of the + or - . so if the wire goes on one - then the + across from that will get wired, not next to it. I am however not an LED expert, evil66 is, so I'd ask him

[Solarflare8806]

So your LED's aren't getting hot at all when you touch the bulb? hmmmm we'll the only thing i can think of is that whoever attached the emtter to the star must not have done it right. . ..

[.Newman.]

yes, my LEDs give barely any heat off on their emitter side. i cant even feel much from them. I'd imagine they would give a lot of heat to the heatsink but the fan i run keeps the heatsink cool.

 

touch your blue Cree LED, does that one give off any heat? I suspect its the ones that are not Cree that are getting hot....

[Solarflare8806]

Yeah I touched the blue one, i'm only running it at 500mA and the emitter gets real hot. All the LEDs are made by Cree, the blue is XR-E and the whites are XP-Gs. . . . . not really sure . . .. .

 

 

what current are you running your LED's?

[.Newman.]

I'm running a string of 3 on each of my 2 Meanwell 700 drivers. non-dimmable, so i assume full power.

[Solarflare8806]

Update!

 

Things have been slow because i'm waiting till i move to stock this thing but I finally made my fuge.

 

 

 

I still need to make chambers for it. I'm planning a first chamber where water will down through

-filter sponge

-carbon floss

-chemi-pure elite

-Purigen

Then the water will flow up through chaeto.

Lastly the water will be brought back to the tank via a 80gph pump.

[badfish816]

nice man. can't wait to see it finished.

[Solarflare8806]

Yeah I know me too. In about a month i'll be able to stock it and have something to look at. right now its just a tangled mess of wires.

[Squeaky]

That looks tight!! Nice craftsmanship!!

[Solarflare8806]

haha thanks, i really don't have any tools. just a dremel.

[sammy113]

Nice work! may I ask why so much white and just 1 blue? even going 1:1 ratio with XPG's the whites overpower the RB's

 

haha thanks, i really don't have any tools. just a dremel.

Oh you don't need anything else. That's the tool every man should have in his closet

[Solarflare8806]

Yeah I actually wanted to do a 60-40 with 3 CW and 2 RB but i screwed up my order and didn't exactly specify. The only reason i got that blue one was becuase I had it for a flashlight.

 

I tend to go more for a whiter balance simply because I want more full spectrum lighting than just predominantly blue. I kinda rationalized that since LED's are very narrow spectrum light sources that if I went even 50/50 it would be way blue. The Cree XP-Gs that I'm using have a huge peak at 450nm and then drop off, the next peak is only half the RRP and its at 525-575nm in like the greenish yellow area. . .

 

 

also i'm a noob lol

[Solarflare8806]

Well, finally got moved into the new place. I ordered some corals and they should be here tomorrow. Here is a full tank shot. i'll prolly end up taking most of this rock out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry for the dirty front, i just added water. The LED's are at 10%, i couldn't get a good shot with them any higher.

[Mr. Microscope]

Cool. Nice upgrade with the..AIO plexi thing! Good luck.

[Solarflare8806]

thanks mr. m. I am glad i went with plexi.

[Solarflare8806]

Ok so I FINALLY got some corals in. I bought them off of ebay from ReefEmpire. It was a good experience except for the fact that i lost some corals from people bidding 5 sec before the auction was up. lol

 

anyways heres some pics. I'm not putting them into my tank yet untill i figure out a way to get them off the plugs they are on.

 

 

3 zoas, 1 GSP, and 2 Chalices.

the brownish chalice in the front is not doing so good. . . . .

 

 

3 different montis-Rainbow, Tyree greeen thing, and reverse sunset.

 

All corals opened up nicely except the one chalice.

 

These pics are with my LED array with only the whites on and at about 30%

[Solarflare8806]

ok so here are some more pics.

 

Blue 100%-----White >5%

 

 

 

If i did blues only then all that would show on camera is blue . . . . . in actuality the colors are like fire.

 

I never realized how much photos actually distort a corals true color. For example the green monti actually is really vibrant green and the polyps are super super bright red. I don't really know how to express that with my camera.

 

Also i didn't realize why people used so much blue for their LED's, I always thought everyone used toooo much blue. Based on thier pictures it seemed the corals were really washed out but in person it makes them loook sooooo cool!!

 

Now i'm prolly gonna redo my LED setup so that I have 2 XPG CW and 3 XRE RB. . . .

[Solarflare8806]

UH OH!!! I think i have Zoa Pox!! All three of the zoas I bought have white spots on 'em.

 

I have no expirience with this so I'm gonna need to do some research. From what I gather, I need to buy some furan-2. I'll head over to LFS tomorrow to pick some up.

 

The Zoas are still opening but I can see that there are lots of spots on em. It also seems like there are more and more spots every day.

[Solarflare8806]

alright i'm starting to get a hair algae break out in my frag tank and i'm not sure why, there is hardly any detritus and I don't add anything to the tank except about a cup of distilled water for top off.

 

 

My Rainbow monti is not opening at all, my guess deteriorating water quality, not sure how tho. Also my zoa pox are starting to get worst. I have not been able to find furan-2. might have to order online.

 

A couple days ago I did a 50% water change and i didn't see a difference in polyp extension/overall health of the corals in general, tomorrow I plan to really scrub things down and ensure there is as little detritus as possible. . .

[Solarflare8806]

ok so for an update!

 

I couldn't find any Furan 2 for my zoas but i found an alternative that was a little cheaper. Fungus Clear by Jungle tank buddies, It has the same ingrediants (nitrofurazone, furazolidone, and potassium dichromate) and was only 3.49 at petsmart.

 

As for my little 2.5 gallon holding my corals presently I did a complete makeover of it. I took everything out and scrubbed the walls and changed the water out. I hope now my Rainbow Monti will open up. I'm pretty sure the water quality was the reason because hair algae started to take over.

 

I also bought some more corals- a yellow monti cap and some green palys.

 

My main tank is setup finally. I replaced the pump with a higher rated gph and so i had to adjust things a bit. I also changed up my rock, so now i only have a little bit of rock in there so there is room for the corals to grow.

 

 

I'll post more pics when the new corals open up!

[Solarflare8806]

The furan two worked!

 

well, I noticed that the white spots started to turn brown and that the polyps look healthier. The packet said to put one tab in a gallon of water but I put a packet in about half. Then the zoas went in for about 15-18mins. I also rinsed them twice. I will prolly do another dip maybe next week just in case.

[Solarflare8806]

Oh yeah and i got a new fuge light

 

 

I bought it off of Ebay, its quite bright and i think it will do the job!

 

[.Newman.]

time, nice flow and clean water will clear up zoa pox too

[Solarflare8806]

hey thanks for the tip. I'm really glad its starting to clear up, i was starting to get a bit discouraged.

[.Newman.]

oh and lower light too. I noticed that once my zoas got zoa pox from being too close to the light. a perfectly healthy colony got it so I can assume its a disease that is triggered by stress...