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View Full Version : This started as a light fixture upgrade!



tankonauto
07-22-2012, 07:47 AM
I thought my 55 with coral and fish was okay. I had some sps die off due to the red stringy algae. And I was trying to get the phosphate out with a reactor. Then my Colalvue ballast died for the second time in a year (T5VHO) and I decided to build a LED fixture

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What you see is a 2 lamp warm white garage fixture laying under my DIY VHO
I built a pendant 20" fixture with 12-5w cool white,and 12-3w royal blue

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See all of the stuff in the sump? This didn't seem bright enough so I expanded it, by doubling the led's

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At this point I thought that I have enough light

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Half LED's on

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12 blue, and 12 royal blue on. And the beginning of a lot of algae
After a week of about 200w of LED light I knew I had more nutrient in my system than I thought.

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See it on the soft coral, but it was everywhere.
I did some researching and found your site and aggressively started on a waterfall with a temporary while I built a copy of Floyd turbo's LED waterfall. I took out the skimmer, filter sock and phosphate reactor and put a waterfall in a bucket,

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and in a week I had this!

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With less than all of the flow of a Mag-5 @4' head, and in one week.

In that week my material arrived
$15 for the acrylic cut offs
$36 for the heatsinks, 10 X 6 from heatsinkusa.com
About $75 for the LEDS and driver from rapidled.com

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I cut up the temporary waterfall and put it in and have run it for a week
And there is no algae on the screen, 0 nitrate and phosphate with seven fish eating flake and a big cube of mysis daily.

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Why is there no algae on my screen?
I measured my actual water flow as 240 GPH on a 10" screen
however it does seem to be growing less red algae on the live rock and soft coral and front glass
I need to get ammonia and nitrite tested, and get a low range nitrate kit.

One more thing...
While i was working on my automation a new temp. probe for my setup read the temp at 80 deg.f.
The automation brought the temp down to the setpoint of 75 overnight.

I think i need to be more patient.

djmatteo
08-20-2012, 08:54 PM
It can take a little bit to get going, the screen browning I think is normal initially.

I just noticed this was 4 wks ago you posted. Do you have an update?

Floyd R Turbo
08-20-2012, 10:19 PM
Totally missed this thread, sorry! I would say 240 GPH on a 10" screen is a little low, but you should be getting some growth. I guess give us an update before I go too far into suggestions. Nice build by the way. I'm thinking that putting your lights so close to the top of the water is one reason for your outbreak. You went from fluorescent to LED and increased overall wattage AND put them really low...