Ace's ATS v2.0 - LEDs

[Ace25]

I ordered 4 of these fans from newegg over the weekend so they should be here this week. Once I get them in I will install them on the lids and take a picture.

If your making a SM100 clone, that should be really easy to swap out the T5s with LEDs. You can either go with a real heatsink to fit from www.heatsinkusa.com or just a couple pieces of Channel Aluminum, either way it would be very easy to mount a couple 80mm fans on the backside to keep the LEDs cool.

Few things factored into my screen size... but mostly a lot of guessing and crossing my fingers it worked. Before I ran 2 10" screens on my ATS, so I knew it could handle 20" worth before, but this time I T'd in my BRS Dual Reactor and chiller directly to my return line, lowering the overall flow from my overflow... so as a guess I thought 12" would be about right. Another factor was I designed my sump/baffles to lengths I just pulled out of my behind.. 18" for the first chamber, and it just so happened that with the PVC parts all attached, I got exactly a 12" slot.. actually about 11-3/4, I had to cut a couple squares off a top corner to get the screen to fit good.

I am feeding about 4 cubes worth of food a day.. I was up to about 8 cubes at my peak of my first ATS and it was handling it great... then I made a really stupid mistake and tried out bio-pellets, while running an ATS, and let me tell you from first hand experience, absolutely horrible idea and it crashed my tank a second time in a year. I thought before hand it may cause the algae to die off... but never expected it to do it so fast and to make such a nasty mess of my tank and sump.

[vicbay]

what made ya try the biopellets?

[inkidu]

Just a suggestion. (120mm fan might not fit)
I have had success running 12v 120 mm fans at 6v. The bigger the fan the better. (efficiency and noise)
My understanding is as soon as you get any movement of air over a properly designed heat sink you will get dramatic cooling especially if you consider the relative amount of heat you are trying to remove.
The benefits
Less build up of dust,noise, and also the fan is less likely to fail i.e. you are running at half power.
Although some 12v fans don't run at 6v.
Hope this helps.
This site has great info about fans.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/

[Ace25]

what made ya try the biopellets?

Peer pressure.. lol.. I had done Vodka dosing in the past but it got to be too much of a pain doing daily dosing so I quite and went with the ATS... but then Bio-Pellets came out right as I built my first ATS and for months I kept reading mostly positive reviews on them and saw a lot of locals having success so I finally decided to try them out even though the little voice in my head kept telling me it was a bad idea. I just didn't realize how bad an idea it was until I tried. I think I lasted 3 weeks until I removed them and in those 3 weeks it did so much damage that almost 6 months later I am still recovering, although I think I am finally towards the end of my recovery and my tank is starting to look good again. I won't say bio-pellets are bad, too many people have success with them, they are just bad in certain circumstances, ie. tanks that use algae as its main filtration method.

[mrbncal]

Just pull 2 velcro tabs and the screen drops right out. Used the same velcro method on my last ATS and the the velcro lasted fine the entire time and never gave me a single problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wGllg25vvQ

I like that! Well done

[Ace25]

Thanks! The first time I watched SM's video showing him cutting zip ties to remove the screen I thought there had to be an easier way. Velcro was the answer for me.

Here is a picture from today. I cleaned the screen on Thursday, 4 days ago, because I had scrubbed the rocks in my tank to get rid of the majority of the hair algae and it clogged up my screen real quick so I had to clean it earlier than expected. I used a toothbrush on my first cleaning and got the screen almost new looking again. I know, your not supposed to clean it that good the first time but it was mostly slime algae and I figured the more I get rid of it off the screen the less will grow back. Second cleaning on Thursday there was a lot more green hair type algae vs slime algae.. and today even more green vs brown so the slime phase, which I also had on my first ATS, is going away much quicker the second time around.

4 days of growth from a clean screen. LEDs do work.. and they work GREAT IMO!

[wgood33]

Ace,
Pleasure to see you here, its been awhile. My ATS (your inspiration) is working great. Your new build here is exactly what I have had in mind for my next system this year. Will be reading this entire thread in the coming days. Regards, Bill

[Ace25]

Thanks Bill! Long time no talk. As of right now, I would say this ATS kicks serious butt over my first one. I have designed enough things for this hobby in my head and then built it only to find out the many different ways reality can show you things you didn't think of during the planning stages, my main LED light was certainly one of those. But this design for the ATS has actually worked exactly like I hoped it would when I designed it. I am still shocked by that myself because nothing ever works 100% like you think it will when your designing it.. this was one of the super rare instances it did work out. Actually, I can't think of anything else reef related that I designed that didn't require weeks of tweaking after the fact to get it working like I had hoped. To say I am happy as a pig in $*** would be an understatement.

Now I am working on my electrical mess ... I have a new Uber Arduino controller (Reef Angel + pH probe + 3x Temp probes + WiFi + 2x 8 Port power blocks + Custom made 8 Channel PWM controller). I am just getting it all mounted on some of that white particle board stuff along with 4 Mean Well PWM drivers. Once that is done my next project is removing my canopy, using clear netting for the top, and hanging the LED light above. Always something to do in this hobby.. but for the past year growing corals have been my lowest priority. Once my hardware projects are all done I can start to focus on that again, but for now I have plenty of corals in my 29G under LEDs that are growing good, even SPS corals, so when the time is right I can put some back into my 75G which is pretty bare, just the giant Duncan colony, couple other LPS corals, and a couple super hardy SPS corals like the Blue Milli and Psammacora.

[wgood33]

Haha, Nothing like mission acomplished on a big project with unknowns. I too will be going enclosed with LED's, likely to copy cat ya here. Glad it was a success, I know how that feels... Great!

[vicbay]

alright. gratz on the green screen.

good to see its doing well. and meeting expectations is truely sweet.

anyhow. been playing a little and my build is not quite up to par(lol) with yours. i am only using xr-e warm whites. a meanwell non-dimmable constant current driver at 700ma. i have three lined up about 1" apart to just test things out. my discrepancy is the par. i get bout 1500 one inch away from the led on center. if i maintain 1" away but move about 1" to the side it drops to bout a 1000.

yours looks about 2 inches from screen and your saying you have even coverage correct? i assume you mean 1500 par plus or minus 100. is that a safe assumption? or are you seeing the kind of drop i am?

just curious if maybe my leds are underdriven or perhaps not warmed up completely(only on bout two mins). still wish we had par numbers from an sm100 or at least a 2700k t5 with quality reflectors.

moving on. thanks for the updates and sharing and keep them coming.

btw heres spectrum from 23 cfl(top). and xr-e warm white led(bottom)