It's alive! Alive!

[Mazzy21]

Last year I moved apartments and there were some tragedies. Without going into the whole thing (just go along with me here...), one of the biggest was stupidly losing my XR15PRO by sitting it on top of the curved hood of a Fluval 13.5 and then pretty immediately watching one corner of that lid dip into the water and take my light with it, with a nice 'pop' sound before the light went out. I took it apart and couldn't find wetness, I meticulously cleaned every nook of it with q-tips in hopes of getting any salt (literally) out of the wound. I left it apart for weeks hoping where ever there might be some water it would eventually dry out... It never started back up again.

It has literally been one year since I moved. I never bothered to put the light back together so I used the Fluval stock light. Now I want to resetup my biocube and I'm going to need a light. I just saw that nanoboxes are on a crazy sale on Premium Aquatics but I thought I'd try out that Radion one last time before I put it on eBay as "broken/as is" for $50. It turned right on!! I don't know how many weeks it took it to truly dry out but I am super happy it turned on!!

Now my only issue is that I kinda want a nano box because the Radion is just honestly too advanced for me. lol But it's nice to know I don't HAVE to buy a light if I decide I want to keep harder corals again. So happy!

[Tamberav]

haha wow crazy lucky! Thanks for the heads up on the sale, those are older lime 2 channel looks like but still a fantastic light. The lids are on sale too.

[Mazzy21]

Yeah, after I posted I realized they were the older models and I haven't looked on the Market place in a long time so I'm not sure what they are going for, but less than $150 for a brand new one I feel like *seems* like a  good deal. I just reprogrammed my Radion and honestly it's just again proving to me that it's too much light/tech for me. lol I am still pondering selling it (with full disclosure of the original tragedy, of course) and getting that nanobox. I just think this Radion is too much for me in a multitude of ways: it's too high tech, it's too intense (I have bleached SO many corals), and I don't know enough about lighting to do anything but see how I like the color within the tank rather than what will and won't actually be good for the corals.

I DO have the whole ecotech family though so that's the only thing holding me back/making the decision harder. I have the vortech, ecosmart controller, and the radion, and I most like programming the vortech to slow down during feeding time and then to go straight into cleaning mode to push everything toward the filtration, but not being able to do that one thing wouldn't be the end of the world I guess. Or I could keep the ecosmart just to program the vortech but that seems silly. But no matter what, just glad it works again, I was able to calibrate it, program it, and run it through a preview without a problem, so I *think* it's in the clear. The fan hasn't had to come on yet so we'll see about that at some point.

[Tamberav]

1 hour ago, Mazzy21 said:

Yeah, after I posted I realized they were the older models and I haven't looked on the Market place in a long time so I'm not sure what they are going for, but less than $150 for a brand new one I feel like *seems* like a  good deal. I just reprogrammed my Radion and honestly it's just again proving to me that it's too much light/tech for me. lol I am still pondering selling it (with full disclosure of the original tragedy, of course) and getting that nanobox. I just think this Radion is too much for me in a multitude of ways: it's too high tech, it's too intense (I have bleached SO many corals), and I don't know enough about lighting to do anything but see how I like the color within the tank rather than what will and won't actually be good for the corals.

I DO have the whole ecotech family though so that's the only thing holding me back/making the decision harder. I have the vortech, ecosmart controller, and the radion, and I most like programming the vortech to slow down during feeding time and then to go straight into cleaning mode to push everything toward the filtration, but not being able to do that one thing wouldn't be the end of the world I guess. Or I could keep the ecosmart just to program the vortech but that seems silly. But no matter what, just glad it works again, I was able to calibrate it, program it, and run it through a preview without a problem, so I *think* it's in the clear. The fan hasn't had to come on yet so we'll see about that at some point.

I have both the new mints and the not-very-old limes and both are absolutely fantastic. I would say limes allow a person to run lower intensity white but still have a natural lit looking tank (bright white but still pop) and mints allow a person to skip white and have a more blue lit tank (but you can still make it white if you want).

 

You should also check out his basic light. It has no control but that makes it simple, no fan so its silent. Has mint led's.

 

 

 

There are flawed units too:

 

 

And older bodies with all the newest parts under the hood:

 

 

 

 

So I think it just depends how much control you want and your plans for corals. He has presets now in his newer units you can flip through (or manually copy). I started there and then adjusted accordingly.

 

Now... all that being said... there is nothing really wrong with your current light. It sounds like you were probably cooking your corals with too much light. If you want to keep your current light and give it a go, I would dial it back quiet a bit, especially the whites. I would also hang it above the tank a decent amount to avoid burning corals.

 

Its easy to kill corals with too much light but having not enough and they generally would take a long time to die and you would know they need more light long before then. Zoa's would start reaching, SPS would brown out trying to capture more light, mushrooms would open up huge, ect. Then you just slowly increase intensity.

 

 

[Mazzy21]

The fates made the decision for me. This morning the light is sold out. Guess I'm keeping my Radion, at least until next Black Friday. 🙂

[WV Reefer]

29 minutes ago, Mazzy21 said:

The fates made the decision for me. This morning the light is sold out. Guess I'm keeping my Radion, at least until next Black Friday. 🙂

I would keep experimenting with it...... I’ve had mine for a year now and I am still “dialing” them in to what is best for the Corals and what is best for my eyeballs. lol. 

[Mazzy21]

5 minutes ago, WV Reefer said:

I would keep experimenting with it...... I’ve had mine for a year now and I am still “dialing” them in to what is best for the Corals and what is best for my eyeballs. lol. 

That's actually a second gripe I have with Radions. I bought a $400 light to run it at less than 50%? Why not just buy a $200 light and run it at 90%?

[Tamberav]

2 hours ago, Mazzy21 said:

That's actually a second gripe I have with Radions. I bought a $400 light to run it at less than 50%? Why not just buy a $200 light and run it at 90%?

Sounds like you don't need a different light but you need a bigger tank to put it on 😉

 

 

[Mazzy21]

This is moving away from "general" and into "lighting" but I didn't want to make a separate thread -

For anyone reading this: I let my light run a few hours of it's cycle sitting on my desk tonight (elevated on the edges by books so there would be SOME air circulation all around). It ran about 2 hours. I never heard the fan but I honestly wasn't paying a lot of attention because I was doing a water change. When I turned off the light it was completely cool. Would you consider that a good indication that the fan must have been engaged at some point during the 2 hours or is that just wishful thinking and I won't know until/unless my light burns up or I physically see the fan running?

[Mazzy21]

PS - last thing: Check out this craziness - yesterday when I was running it through it's cycle and calibrating it, both of which had the lights on different colors for only maybe 5-10 minutes absolute max at a time, it BURNED my desk!!

[Tamberav]

Can't you just turn the fan on somehow in the settings? Or is there a test button so you can see the light at its peak? It should turn on during a test I would think. 

 

If the fan isn't working, there are videos by ecotech on how to replace it. I would also check to see if any corrosion on the board where the fan connects. If a replacement doesn't work, you could probably power a fan inside it with a separate adapter on a wall timer to turn on when the light does. 

 

 

[Mazzy21]

I can't figure out how I could test it. Yesterday when I ran through the cycle and calibration it got really hot on the edges and the fan didn't come on. Today the edges weren't hot at all when I turned it off. But neither of those things make me confident in the fan. I really want to see it running OR know that it is supposed to be running at that moment (as a test like you mentioned) so that I can know definitively. I did see the video links on ecotech's site. The best I can do I guess is just monitor it. There is no separate fan test that I can see on the ecosmart controller.

 

Pt 2 - well I just did a quick search and at least there is supposedly a built in warning if the fan isn't working. On Reef Central there was a discussion (in which Ecotech was directly engaging) stating that the red lights flash if the fan stops working. Also that the XR30 fans stay on 24/7 but the XR15 only come on as needed, which was my previous experience. So since my red lights aren't blinking I'm going to, for now, assume good things but with one skeptical eye on the light. lol