The Second Coming

[mpagri]

I posted on here at the end of summer about how my tank was accidentally nuked by the person who's hands I left it in while I was away for two weeks - in short the two week supply of food was dumped in all at once. My own fault really..

 

Well the wounds have scarred over and with some time off for the holidays I have decided that it is time to rebuild.

 

I am down to just one working ballast and no night lights. Rather than to simply replace the stock parts I would much rather take this opportunity to upgrade.

 

I like the JBJ K2 viper 70w clamp on but am also looking into LEDs - standard and PAR bulbs. My favorite thing about the stock AP12 was the closed system aspect, the evaporated water would just drip back in and top off was always minimal. If I go with the PAR bulbs or the metal halide, unless I put a glass/acrylic custom cut top on it, I lose that. The standard LED route can tuck into the stock hood, but seems like much more expense and DIY work than the other two. Finally can I even find LED kits/PAR bulbs that will provide enough coverage, light, fit the tank and my wallet.

 

I am still doing my research but wanted to get a thread going about the tanks revival and maybe people with more experience can weigh in with some opinions.

 

Here it is after not being touched for 4 months:

http://worldmap.ws/gallery/?attachment_id=467

[plantman1028]

Hope you can get it all squared away. Sucks when you loose a tank. I tried to put one of Evil66 par 38 over a 12g nano cube, but you would need 2 to help with the shadowing problems. They have an awsome retro kit on rapidled.com.Check out their site. I dont know what your budget is, but its worth a try....Good Luck!

[mpagri]

Hope you can get it all squared away. Sucks when you loose a tank. I tried to put one of Evil66 par 38 over a 12g nano cube, but you would need 2 to help with the shadowing problems. They have an awsome retro kit on rapidled.com.Check out their site. I dont know what your budget is, but its worth a try....Good Luck!

 

Thanks, i was actually just trying to find out more about the rapidled kits, do they provide quality products? price wise and comparing only number of LEDs (24 LED rapidled kit) it seems to make more sense to go with two ecoxotic panorama strips. i dont know if it is a fair comparison or not though.

 

in terms of growth rate, does LED compare to mh?

[plantman1028]

The leds the use are all cree's, so the quality is there. I'm really not sure about growth rate cause I just put the par38 ove my 5.5 rimless, so I dont want to tell you something im not 100% sure about.What I do know is that there is really no comparison between 2 ecoxotic panorama strips and 24- 3watt cree's. The strips just fall short on color and adaptabilitty...You can mix and match the leds for the look you want and you can also dim them.Choices, choices, choices!

[rO.oster]

for the AP12 i would do a 12 or 18 LED setup, max. The 24 is too much. The panorama strips are accent only, and do not add a real boost to the power of the lighting.

 

Read up and maybe do the DIY build yoruself (some soldering, wiring, not THAT bad really) and you will save money, and enjoy it much more.

 

I stay with the hood on the minimize the evaporation loss. Good Luck, build the right foundation and the road stays smooth!

[mpagri]

So many set backs in getting this thing going again! The tank has really fallen into disrepair. When I tried to get the splash guard out to measure how much space I have for a heatsink many of the screws stripped instantly due to corrosion, so I can't even get the guard off at the moment. The front glass also has some mean scratches in it. I am thinking about scrapping this tank as a display, maybe it'll be a sump someday, and starting with anew.

 

I'm going to go get a screw extractor and see how that works out and then keep planning from there. If I can solve this splash guard issue maybe I'll put up with the scratches.

 

Oh I'm pretty sure when I'm ready I'm going to go with RapidLED 6 x XR-E Blue and 6 x XP-G White