lastlight's 404

[lastlight]

What a frustrating night!

1. Instead of shutting my four 6105s off to feed acan plus to my acans, duncans, zoas and brain (which always leaves a little too much flow still) I did the right thing and turned ALL flow off for 10 min. This must have allowed the fish to more easily pinpoint which corals were covered in tastiness. The kole and melanarus in a particular were pretty aggressively nipping at the corals for food. I was chasing them away for the full 10 min Next time I'll try feeding them first!

2. Since adding T5s my amazing access (via sliding halides) has been really messed up. Front T5s swing up and out of the way but the rear 2 rows are mounted to a massive 8 foot long piece of wood. The thing has to be slid right against my halides to get light into the tank. Currently it hangs from some wire but I already know I need to come up with something to allow me to raise or slide them away from the halides

3. Caught my kole nipping at my purple gorg for like 2 min today. Right on! I've never hung back and just watched this tank yet to avoid the give us food! give us food! reaction from the fish. My eyes have been opened

4. Female anthias still hasn't eaten

5. I really hate how those rear T5 are mounted

[The Grizz]

Sounds like the typical reefer day

[lastlight]

Here's what I'm bitching about.

For starters this works like a dream. Front access didn't change a bit. I won't get blinded when I open the doors once I wire a depressable kill switch like a fridge door has (reverse tho lol).



This is my nightmare. Big ugly at the back. I think for starters I need some 4 foot pieces of that metal from the hardware store with the holes in it (think mechano set). Mount to those so they're at least STRAIGHT lol and then sort out some sort of lift. What I currently have in mind is more PVC! Use 1.5" vertical sleeves mounted to the ceiling for each 4 footer and then mount the lights to vertical 1". The 1" slides in the 1.5" and I just latch a tether to the back wall when I want in there? I don't know but it drives me NUTS right now.

[The Grizz]

Is there any way you can mount the T5's to the MH so they all move at once. Bring the PVC down from the top slider in between the T5's & MH and add a tee with pipes to support both sets of lights.

[lastlight]

The trouble with that is I can only slide the halides forward maybe 4 inches from where they are right now so that solution won't give me enough space to get my arm in. I like each halide moving independently so don't want to lose that.

I already know the T5s need to NOT be one 8 foot titan

Looking at it again... if I raise the halides up a little so the souch mounts clear the T5s... I can rig each 4 foot t5 to slide as well so the slide UNDER the halides. That will let me slide the halides furth BACK again too. Ooooohhhhh! If I wasn't so damn grumpy right now I'd be... not grumpy.

[lastlight]

I was feeling better until I realized I can't add more pvc sliders without cutting those top rails. Not happening! I think it's time to recycle a small army of drawer slides I have kicking around

[The Grizz]

Time to upgrade to DIY LED?