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TYRYFIN

INDMAS Member
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Everything posted by TYRYFIN

  1. The address is 7619 Dartmouth Road, Indianapolis 46260. I am just a little south and east of 79th and Ditch.
  2. What day are we looking at for the meeting?
  3. I will be able to hold the meeting as the tank is full of rock and water (Thanks Jeremy for all your help). The tank looks quite different than in the past. I will post pictures when I get the lights hooked up.
  4. If the tank is set back up I can host it. I should know in the next couple of weeks.
  5. I apologize for the problem this has caused but I have lost 75% of corals and it just looks really bad. I am moving everything left out and will shut down and replace all live rock, sand and corals. PA will hold all the fish and I am just starting over. I have no idea what happened. Bill
  6. Where are people buying large bulk packs of Nori/Sea Weed/ Algae. I am looking for at least 100 or better sheets per pack. Premium has some but there in smaller amounts. Bill
  7. Thanks for the wishes and I did get a goody, a new calcium reactor
  8. I have made some over the years to use as base rock, and I still make frag plugs using the GARF instructions.
  9. Looks really great! Nice job! What are the size of your tank? I know your tank is 30'' deep and the blue clearly has no trouble penetrating so I should have no trouble with my 24'' deep tank. Anybody have recommendations on what white lights to use? I am trying to get an idea on how many LED's I need for my 180. I was thinking of 48 royal blue and 48 white (of some kind). All 3 watt. I am facing the same space limitations in the canopy. It is less about space limitation than economy regarding ongoing life cycle costs of bulb replacements, etc. I estimate spending about $150.00 per year with my PCF setup. Moving to MH would be at least the same and probably more. With this setup, I could get something installed and running for about $1000.00. Seems like a cost effective solution today whereas even 2 years ago installing LED's was very cost prohibitive. I welcome any comments or advice. Thanks! Thanks, The tank is 600 gallons, the dimensions are 130 X 36 X 30. The pure cost of replacing all my lights at one time because of the size stopped me from doing it. I have approx $ 450 in this one setup, I figure I would need 7 of these to replace everything. I am so impressed with the Royal Blue LEDs that I am going to order another set to replace the v VHOs that I still have. I will have approx $ 900 in it and it will save me approx $300 a year in bulb replacement (every 6 months) and according to the calulator on Reef Central approx $120 a year in electricity cost. It should also help reduce temperature in the tank (100 LEDs X 3 watts = 300 watts vs 6 X 110 watts = 660 watts for VHO) thus less chiller usage. I think it is a no brainer so far, and I repeat so far.
  10. Here are a couple of pictures I took last night comparing just to compare VHO actinic to LED. I apologize for my photo skills. This is 48 royal blue 3 watt Cree LEDs, the LEDs are spaced three inches on center. The LEDs are in a straight line at the front of the tank angled toward the center. The view is approx 1/3 of the tank. The VHOs are off This shows the tank with four 110 watt VHO actinics on. The actinic are toward the back of the tank. I know it is hard to see but the LEDs look more crisp and a more vivad darker blue, the VHOs seem to be more washed out. The lights are approx 12 inches off the top of the water.
  11. Well I got the LEDs up and in place late last night (too late for a picture). The color of the red and green corals in the tank really exploded under the LEDs only. I was trying to leave the setup as it was before but beause of space issues I had to remove one set of 110 watt VHOs to make room. I will take pictures tonight.
  12. Really interested in your progress on this DIY. I am interested in doing something similar for my 200 gal mixed reef tank. I noticed there are 5 w led's out there. Have considered those or do you think the 3 w's will do the trick. Just doing quick math, the money is not all that outrageous anymore to consider this in place of MH or another lighting setup especially considering the energy bill and cost of replacements. Great DIY Project. Thanks for sharing! I did not look very hard at the 5 watt LEDs as the 3 watt ones have had a pretty good track record so far and the 5 watt are fairly new. Since my primary goal on this is to replace only my actinics I went with the 3 watt bulbs. I did not get any work on them this weekend, but I did do a little last night. I did decide to add a second U channel the total length for added stability and extra heat dissapation. I hope to finish the mounting and soldering tonight. I will post pictures when I finish.
  13. I have read that those arent ideal moon lights. They are too strong and could bleach the corals. You might want to fjnd a 1 watt LED and use it. Just a quick update, I completed another 12 and will have to buy another 8 foot section of U channel to finish it. I hope this weekend but the boys have baseball practice and games.
  14. Very nice. That is bright. A nice before and after pic will be nice to see the comparison. As soon as I get it all built I will provide before and after shots on the tank. Can you provide a supplier of parts? I am wanting to do retro moon lighting. I was thinking about 4 of the 3 watt LED over a 75. Do you think that will be to bright for moon lights? I got all parts from Rapidled.com. The pricing was very competetive with most and the had stock and shipped within a couple of day. I think that would work well. Are you going to cover the wiring and soldering post? The LEDs have a + and - labeled terminal and all you do is solder a wire from the negative of the first LED to the positive of the second, then from the negative of the second to the positive of the third and repeat until you get to the last LED. The Meanwell driver has four leads, two are the AC input and the other two are labled + and - DC. You solder the Meanwell + to the first Led + terminal and the Meanwell - is soldered to the last Led's - terminal. I am using a variable 20 or 40 watt soldering iron and electrical solder with 16 ga wire. I would reconmend using 18 ga wire.
  15. I have started a new project to supplement or replace the six VHOs on my tank. Because of limitation on space I am trying to use LEDs instead of trying to cram another couple of bulbs into my canopy. I looked at LED's several years ago with the original Solaris LED fixture but those 1 watt LEDs were not strong enough for a 30 inch deep tank and they plain did not work on my tank. With the advancement in LED technology the new 3 watt Cree LEDs are very appealing with both their output, long life, and foot print. So I decided to purchase 48 three watt Royal Blue Cree LEDs, 4 Meanwell LPC-35-700 drivers, and twenty-four 40 degree optics. The drivers I went with are not dimmable as I figured I would need all of the blue light and they were half the cost of the dimmable version. The optics were an after thought due the depth of my tank; spotlighting may be an issue with the 40 degree lenses. My thought is to run the LEDs on aluminum U channel the length of my tank spaced every 3 inches. Cree LED I did not like the placement of the slots used for mounting as I was going to use SS screws instead of nylon to save time (tapping hole)and money; so I put my own slots on what would be the north and south poles of the star. A dremel and a cutting bit made this easy. The reason I did this was to prevent shorting the solder pads to ground. I had read that some people have had difficulties in soldering to the solder pads but I did not have this, if I had it to over I would use 18 gauge wire instead of 16. I hooked the driver up to the 12 LEDs and did the smoke test and everything worked. The light was brighter than I thought it would be. I am 25% of the way done and hope to finish the rest over the weekend. I will try to post more pictures when I can.
  16. I got nailed by one a few years ago on a tiny cut on my nuckle and it swelled and got really infected for a couple of weeks. Like you it nothing had ever bothered me before. Makes you think about wearing gloves.
  17. I am getting ready to build a 48 light setup using CREE royal blues. I am hoping to either replace my Actinc VHO's or supplement them depending on how they do. Are you using optics? Bill
  18. Well I just jumped onto the LED bandwagon sort of, I have ordered 40 3 watt royal blue CREE XR-E leds. I am going to play around with replacing or supplementing the VHO Actinics that I am using. I will try to take some pictures of my work and post them. I should get the leds on Saturday or Monday.
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  20. The line voltage in your house should not vary more than a couple volts from circuit to circuit unless you are loading a line above its rated capacity, undersized wire, or an incoming power issue. If your voltage is varying that much from circuit to circuit then you need to get an ammeter to check the current draw on each circuit to see where they are at. I would also monitor the 230 volt incoming line in you CB box to see if the voltage is varying there, if this is solid then I would monitor the two 230 volt circuits to your neutral. Most CB boxes have a left and right side one 230 volt line goes to half the breaker slots and the other 230 volt line goes to the other half. The bad thing is it is not a left side right side thing. In a 12 breaker box lets say, typically line A goes to breakers 1,5,9,2,6,10 and Line B goes to 3,7,11,4,8,12. So if all your large current draw circuits are on one line you can pull down the line voltage. If you can prove that the line is dipping IPL will come out and check your power meter and your transformer and fix it at no charge. As for a buck boost transformer see below, they can limit how much they boost based on its input. There are two basic types, self adjusting (active) or passive designs. The active types monitor incoming voltages and will adjust the outgoing voltage to be within an acceptable range. This is typically between 115VAC and 225VAC for computer UPS systems. The system will either buck (lower) or boost (raise) the voltage if it senses a variance in the incoming voltage. Several taps are provided on the transformer winding which allow adjustment of the ratio. In an active buck?boost transformer, a control circuit selects which tap to use to maintain the output voltage within the desired range, over a range of input voltages. The control portion of the device that senses the voltage drop or rise is not technically part of the transformer, but rather a part of the larger transformer assembly. Passive transformers are used for larger equipment where the amount of buck or boost is fixed. For example, a fixed boost would be used when connecting equipment rated for 230 VAC to a 208 V power source. The passive transformers are rated in volt-amperes (or more rarely, amperage) and are rated for a percent of voltage drop or rise. For example, a buck?boost transformer rated at 10% rise at 208VAC will raise incoming voltage of 210VAC to 231VAC. A rating of 5% drop at 240VAC will yield the result of 233VAC if the actual incoming voltage is 245VAC
  21. I think Lowes or Menards might have them, if not try one of the electrically dist Kirby Risk, Grainger, or Duncan Supply. Not sure on price. Bill
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