Joe's Starfire 210

[fishytime]

good to here the transfer went well.....thats gonna be ton of light

[plutoniumJoe]

Right now it is 3 X 250MH. The T5s will only be 2 X 54watt as I don't want to replace the ballast at this time. For LED it will only be 6blue and 6white.

[plutoniumJoe]

Well I have added the T5s to the rack. They are a bit short but they will do. I am running them both with Fiji Purples and it is a nice transition light and makes the corals pop at night.



I have also added two strips of 3X3Watt LEDs that make great moon lights. I stopped running them for now as I need to set up a better way to put them on a timer as I don't want them running full power all night, it's too bright.

I am still working on the cabinetry and hope to have the doors and the top on this weekend (wishful thinking, looks like it will be a gardening weekend).

I also added an exhaust fan that you can see in the top left of the picture and will need to hook that up to a humidistat.

Thanks for looking.
Joe.

[Sebae again]

Your tank looks great! What brand of leds are you using and where can you buy them?

[plutoniumJoe]

Hi Sebae,
The LEDs are Prolight 3W that I got off ebay. http://cgi.ebay.ca/20x-White-3W-LED-...#ht_3088wt_962

I bought blue and soft white.

[plutoniumJoe]

Well things have been up and running for a couple of months now and no real big issues. I did have a bit of a problem with the return pump being too loud. It is a PanWorld PXX100 and I thought it was supposed to be quiet but the noise was shaking my fillings loose. The room is supposed to be a media center but with the noise coming from the pump it wasn't going to work out.

I had the return line bolted to the wall so that it was suspended above the tank. I had put the black foam insulation that you put around pipes around it to help dampen the noise but it was useless. In the end I think the wall was reverberating the pump noise.


So.. I unbolted the pipe and reassembled it so that it sits on the rim of the tank. Below I cut away a section of solid pipe and replaced it with clear vinyl. Things are better but once I get the doors on the cabinet it might be acceptable.

[plutoniumJoe]

The summer heat was also causing a problem with my tank getting up to about 84F. I had already installed an exhaust fan that I thought I would need once I encased the lights but it didn't seem to make a difference. The Halide ballasts were stored under the tank and generate a metric butt load of heat. So even when the lights were off there was still a couple of hours of radiant heat coming off the ballasts.

I also didn't like the way the three cords had to come up the back of the tank to the light rack. I decided that I would build a shelf in the garage to hold the ballast and simply drill a hole through the wall and have all the hot stuff on the other side of the wall.



It worked well, heat fluctuates between 78-80 and the wires are all cleaned up.

The blue wire on the left is for the eventual surround sound speakers that will be mounted in that corner.

- Joe