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whats the paintman been up to???????????

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paintman27

mnat said:
Figure 16 bulbs a year times roughly 20 bucks you are at 320 a year in bulb replacement plus 1540 for the initial cost. You could probably buy leds at this point for that price and not have to worry about bulb replacement. I still love T5s and have the dimmable sunpower for my frag tank, so I think it is a solid fixture. Just throwing some ideas out there.
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Hey everyone, its not that I am avoiding you and my tank, its just that life gets in the way of reefing sometimes. Plus the fact that I can't make my mind up as to what to do about lighting my tank. Halides are definitely out of the question. So i am torn between LED's and T'5's. Today being bored out of my mind and not wanting to blow leaves, I decide to take a ride to the local hole where I dump my money (Something Fishy) in Allentown PA. I got to talking with the owner about my situation.

He showed me the LED units that he is using to switch all his tanks over to just for the electrical savings. He told me they where made by a company called Blue Reef. I would say he has about 20-30 of his display tanks running on LED's. Because my tank is only 20" deep he suggested for me to take one of his 120 Watt units home and try it over the new tank just to see how well it lit up the tank. Of course if I didn't like the unit I could return it for his 260 watt or just get store credit on the return. So I agreed and dropped $325 on an unmarked box LOL! I figured what the hell do I have to loose, if I don't like the unit I still have $325 in store credit that I can easily burn through on salt and other misc. stuff just to keep my current tank running. So here's what was in the box when I got home.

Mind you, the first red flag was a brown box with not even the name of the company or any specs on the outside. Here's a pic of the generic instructions! Even on the instructions not a clue as to the manufacturer, no registration card, or any phone number for technical advice.
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Here's a couple of pics of the unit.
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I didn't bother to take a pic of the unit fired up over my tank but I can say I think 3 units would work for what I am doing. However, it's obvious these are just some cheap pieces of garbage that really only belong on the shelves of Home Depot or Lowes. If you can't even enclose your business name and phone number with your product, Its best to run away run away as fast as I can.
 
jgraz

jgraz

Looks like the run of the mill Chinese units only dimmable. For what it's worth lots of people are getting great results with them. Some here on NJRC. There is a long thread on RC if your interested.
 
redfishbluefish

redfishbluefish

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
They look like the "Chinese" LED's folks talk about. My only concern would be if they had aluminum cooling plates inside. If not, I'd be a bit leery. Take a look at Apollo LED's.....assembled here in the USA...with cooling aluminum....assembled right here in PA.....with knockout PAR.
 
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paintman27

redfishbluefish said:
They look like the "Chinese" LED's folks talk about. My only concern would be if they had aluminum cooling plates inside. If not, I'd be a bit leery. Take a look at Apollo LED's.....assembled here in the USA...with cooling aluminum....assembled right here in PA.....with knockout PAR.
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Hey thanx for the heads up on Apollo Reef's LED's! At least they have the courage to have a website where you can talk to them if you have a problem or question. I would imagine all these cheaper units are sharing the same parts basically. I think I might be all over 4 of those units.:D
 
ecam

ecam

President
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Those retail for 499. I believe te 160w are the 27inch model
 
P

paintman27

Hey I know that dude!!!!!!!!!!!
SPICOLI_zps7d468f03.jpg
That's the Paintman, he hasn't been around in a while:highly_amused:
So as I was saying....I finally got around to choosing my lights! I was torn between all T5's or all LED's. Well, after much debate and web reading (to the point I now wear glasses), I Have them ordered and should be here soon. I also have a hole bunch of aluminum channel and Esto connectors sitting in my basement waiting to be assembled. But I can't do that until my fixtures arrive. So what kind of lights did the paintman choose you ask.......Well I guess you guys and gals will have to answer in the form of a question since we are playing Jeopardy don't cha know!
So here's the clue: This paintman being a cheap SOB and hating technology, but still wanting the best possible tank he can afford choose these lights?
 
P

paintman27

And the answer is!!!!!!!!!!!...................What is the paintman got in on the Reefbreeders group buy and ordered 2 Photon 32's
Although i'm not so sure about jumping on the whole LED bandwagon just yet, the price for the units and the shipping lured me in. So here's my rational

1. I couldn't justify spending 2K on Radions or any of the other higher end units.

2. I am not addicted to technology! In fact I can live without it. All I need is a simple on off button. I don't want or need the ability to control my lights from another country with my smart phone. All that nonsense does nothing for me.

3. Up until the group buy came up I was going to go with 2 48" ATI 6 bulb dimmable T5's units, but I was choking on the 2K price tag for the units and bulbs.

4. I figured that if I don't like the LED's or have trouble with them I could always toss them go back to the original plan with the T5's.

The only thing I'm a little nervous about is all the tanks I have seen lit with LED's look awful blue to me. I ended up going with the standard lighting layout that Reefbreeders offer, even though I could have gone with custom colors. But that would have meant being anal for another 6-12 months trying to decide on colors and placement. The current plan is to take some of my extra T5 hardware and ballasts I have laying around collecting dust and mount them on the light rail with the LED's. This way I still have some flexibility with bulbs if I want to play around with color.
Here's some pics of the units I ordered.
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Once I get the units I can then fabricate the light rails. The plan is to have them mounted on a hinge system so that they will fold back above the tank for maintenance.
I'm not sure yet if I am going with just one solid 8ft. setup. I have to wait until my lights come so I can see how heavy they are. My concern is will the aluminium channel may flex in the center to much over the 8ft. span.
IMG_2201_zps83d60f06.jpg

I think what I am going to have to do is make 2 separate 4 ft. rail mounts and have them individually hinged. Here's a couple of pics of the Esto aluminium channel and one of their types of connectors I will be using.
IMG_2204_zpsec9acde0.jpg
IMG_2205_zps6b595d4f.jpg
 
P

paintman27

Ok some small updates. First and most important, A BIG THANK YOU to the tech gurus at NJRC. The imported-paintman has meant his demise, and paintman27 is back in da house! For whatever reason I was never able to get my old passwaord and username back after the change of servers. The only way I could log in was to go back nearly 2 years to my orginal e-mail from NJRC and cut and paste my temporary password and username into the log in boxe. I could never just type them in and click on "log in". Thaaats just one of the reasons I hate things that have to do with technology.

As far as the tank....knowing that I have lights ordered, my motivation has now returned and got me working on some wiring for the pumps and accessories. I was able to get all the boxes and piping run from the sub panel over to the tank. I mounted all my electrical outlets underneath the stand out of view. The one thing I hate about my current setup is the endless clutter of wires all over. My plan is to have all my heater, fuge lights, etc run up the back wall behind some kind of white cover and plug in underneath the tank out of sight.
Here's what I have to look at now. All this except for the sub panel will be gone once the new tank is up and running.
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IMG_2202_zps31e5dfa4.jpg

Here is where everything will be plugged into on the new tank. the 2 boxes mounted on the column at the far end will be switches for the sockets underneath the stand.
IMG_2231_zps6f44e147.jpg


Now i'm sure somebody is going to ask.....what all those big bolts are for? Well there holding my flitch plate together. Because I had to span nearly 14ft. I didn't think just using 2x10's or 12's would be enough to support the tank. So I sandwiched a 10" x 1/2" thick piece of steel plate in between to take out any possible deflection in the beam. I ran the bolts through from the front side and nutted them together on the back. Here's a better view. The redish brown piece is the steel plate. Damn things not only strong but its heavy! Took 2 people to move it into the fish room.
IMG_2234_zps6e91c755.jpg
 
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