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Innovative Marine Aquariums

Sammy's 40B Build


sammy113

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Thanks, im planning on switching over to LEDs since the cost of DIY with cree bulbs is a tad more than changing out bulbs. i was thinking with 48cree bulbs driving them at 100% and supplementing with t5ho actinic bulbs im sure it would be plenty enough for my tank.

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48 sounds the borderline for a tank like yours. If your plan is to drive them at high mA you can certainly go away with fewer LEDs. You gotta think of a good way to arrange them to cover your entire tank. What are the tank dimensions?

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Fantastic build. Really like the clean look of the stand (especially the sliding doors) and the LED fixture looks professionally designed and built.Not that I was expecting anything less than superb after those initial mockups.

 

I may have missed it but what are you plans for stocking (coral/livestock)? It sounded like you were moving some contents over from another tank?

 

-Adam

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Thanks :)

 

Adam, I will be transferring all my corals from my current tank (20 cube in sig). Plans are to keep at least 70% SPS (most of them ORA cause I have a friend who has a nice collection and is growing and fragging a lot of them) some LPS like acans which I already have 4 colonies and some branching like frogspawn, torch and such, Zoas which I already have a lot but want to keep collecting more. That's basically it. As far as fish goes, I have a Percula and want to get another anytime soon. Have a pigmy angel that have been with me for a year now, a female yellow watchman goby that I'm going to give it to a friend cause I don't have sand now, a clown goby and two shrimps (cleaner and fire) was thinking some kind of wrasse but need to research if there is one that does not require a sandbed. Maybe I'll get a midas or bicolor blenny, tailspot blenny or a small school of cardinals.

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48 sounds the borderline for a tank like yours. If your plan is to drive them at high mA you can certainly go away with fewer LEDs. You gotta think of a good way to arrange them to cover your entire tank. What are the tank dimensions?

 

right now the tank is 40"(L)x20"(W)x30"(H) but im planning on "downgrading" my tank to 24"(H) or lower sometime in the future. 30" is just too damn tall.

im planning on arranging it like the AI SOL lights so i will have 2 "modules" with 24LED each. reason being is looking at the data sheets it seems to have nice coverage on a 2'x2' square. supplementing with T5HO will add extra light and spectrum to the tank.

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right now the tank is 40"(L)x20"(W)x30"(H) but im planning on "downgrading" my tank to 24"(H) or lower sometime in the future. 30" is just too damn tall.

im planning on arranging it like the AI SOL lights so i will have 2 "modules" with 24LED each. reason being is looking at the data sheets it seems to have nice coverage on a 2'x2' square. supplementing with T5HO will add extra light and spectrum to the tank.

 

oh I see. True about AI's if you would lit the tank with AI's would use two of them so I don't see a reason to use more than 48. Sounds like a good plan to me. T5 supplementing is a good idea as well. You could add something like purple fiji or true actinic

 

 

In other notes... I transferred 75% of my corals from my cube. I had my fish for a few days now. Feeding everyday to add some waste and increase bacteria. Been dosing a capful of MB7 every other day. Parameter seems to be right on the spot and last night I tried acans and frogspawn. They looked so happy right when I placed them in and today they were doing great. So started dipping corals and transferring and to my surprise almost all of them opened right away! Though it would take some more time due to the dip (did 50/50 peroxide/sea water for nuisance algae and then revive)

 

Took some macro shots and FTS. Processing and cropping now so stay tuned in the next few minutes :D

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Pics as promised :D

 

Acan "island"
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Right side
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Left side
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Some macro eye candy
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FTS
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More corals will be transferred in one or two days. Still treating them for algae removal. Then need to do some stops at friend's house to pic up some frags they got for me :D

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Yum!! Thanks for sharing so many pictures. You have quite the nice collection going.

 

I imagine you're using a DSLR. If so, are you shooting in RAW and post-processing to color correct? The only reason I ask is that I continue to struggle finding just the right setting to capture the colors under LEDs. The spectrum throws the sensor for a loop and I often find it difficult to capture some of the coloration without blowing out the highlights or having it turn out dark. I've added fill flash in the past but then it just looks too "natural" white. I found processing photos under T5s and MH to match true life FAR easier than under LEDs.

 

-Adam

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Yum!! Thanks for sharing so many pictures. You have quite the nice collection going.

 

I imagine you're using a DSLR. If so, are you shooting in RAW and post-processing to color correct? The only reason I ask is that I continue to struggle finding just the right setting to capture the colors under LEDs. The spectrum throws the sensor for a loop and I often find it difficult to capture some of the coloration without blowing out the highlights or having it turn out dark. I've added fill flash in the past but then it just looks too "natural" white. I found processing photos under T5s and MH to match true life FAR easier than under LEDs.

 

-Adam

 

Thanks, welcome to my world of LED photo nightmare :lol: I'm not shooting in RAW just high quality jpeg. Then I take the photos to photoshop and I have an automated action saved to the actions folder with some basic settings that I use on all photos. First I crop the area I want to use then just click the Action button I programed which does the following:

 

Auto Color

Auto Contrast

Auto Levels

Resize to 1000x~800

Save to current file location

Close

 

That take aprox 1 min per photo to edit. Once I hit the action button it does all that stuff in a few seconds. Deciding were to crop takes more time :lol:

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Thanks, welcome to my world of LED photo nightmare

 

Auto Color

Auto Contrast

Auto Levels

Resize to 1000x~800

Save to current file location

Close

 

Thanks. Glad I'm not the only one pulling my hair out trying to capture things look in person...and I used to think shooting under T5s was bad :)

 

Similar to you, I think I've finally developed a preset in RAW that comes close to the right color correction. I may take your approach and see how things look with just Auto Color, Contrast, and Levels. Actions are where it's at!!

 

Can't wait to see all of those frags.

 

-Adam

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  • 3 weeks later...

I went from photobucket to tinypic to picassa to imgur. Imgur seems to do the trick :) I can't wait to see the tank's progress once your pics are up.

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thanks :) gonna switch to something, definitely. Already downloaded picasa to try it. Will check that one as well.

 

We have bandwith back :lol:

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