Garf Posted April 24, 2019 Share Posted April 24, 2019 Ordered Truelumens actinic LED strip and combo white/blue LED strip, with a Current USA Pro Ramp Timer. I wanted to keep the hood, to reduce evap and light bleed (it is next to my computer setup where I work from home). Amazon delivered them today, so I figured it was time to test my Dremel skills. Traced the outline of the strips, then put on a cutting wheel to cut the first slot. The second slot, I used a cutting bit. It gave a cleaner cut, but wanted to jump around if you weren't careful. I then mounted the brackets to the hood with a couple of the supplied sheet metal screws, predrilling holes first so it wouldn't split. A little rough, but nothing a little black duct tape can't hide, lol. Nice lights, adds a lot more blue to the stock lighting. I have the actinic on channel one, and combo on channel 2 so I can do moonlight. Might simply put the stock light on a mechanical timer, or an Alexa plug. Quote Link to comment
chawalte-qcvux5 Posted May 15, 2019 Share Posted May 15, 2019 Like this. I have been looking at some supplemental LED strips to supplement the stock lights on my EVO. Thanks! Quote Link to comment
Garf Posted May 15, 2019 Author Share Posted May 15, 2019 This is how it looks now. In my attempt to see if I could make the stock lights turn on with the blue channel only, I ended up screwing up the stock light. So I stripped it out and put in two more TrueLumen strips. Quote Link to comment
chawalte-qcvux5 Posted May 16, 2019 Share Posted May 16, 2019 15 hours ago, Garf said: This is how it looks now. In my attempt to see if I could make the stock lights turn on with the blue channel only, I ended up screwing up the stock light. So I stripped it out and put in two more TrueLumen strips. Nice! Any clue what kind of PAR you are getting? How are the corals with this setup. I love the idea of using the stock lid. Quote Link to comment
Garf Posted May 16, 2019 Author Share Posted May 16, 2019 10 minutes ago, CountryReefer said: Nice! Any clue what kind of PAR you are getting? How are the corals with this setup. I love the idea of using the stock lid. Take this with a grain of salt, the information was from Current USA information published on the website. Even assuming they are off by 20% in their values, at max, the PAR is 300-240 in the top half of the tank, running at max. Nano reefer hyoib provided stock lighting PAR values if you want to search for those. Quote Link to comment
Garf Posted May 16, 2019 Author Share Posted May 16, 2019 I only have a Duncan, hammer, a small head of acans and a cephastrea frag in here, still waiting for them to open fully. I just diagnosed a problem with phosphates, corrected that and seeing some improvement over the last day. Dealing with diatom bloom, probably had some silicates in my water. My top off water I had been using was contaminated, it looks like I ran water through my RO/DI unit backwards. Corals look healthy, but not fully open. Plus my clown is enjoying thrashing around near my acans and hammer, tossing sand on them. The cephastrea looks the best, polyps bright and open. It will be a couple of weeks before I have my light dialed in, still running my 12k whites and combo strips low. Quote Link to comment
chawalte-qcvux5 Posted May 16, 2019 Share Posted May 16, 2019 Good deal, thanks for that. I looked at his par study and I am thinking about finding a used EVO stock light and mounting it on my Pico frag tank. It will be close enough due to the shallow tank that it should work well. Anyone who sees this and has a take off shoot me a PM. Lol Quote Link to comment
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