kien's 150g Room Divider Mixed Reef & Stuff

[lastlight]

Originally Posted by kien

I'm pretty sure the PJC would cast a significant shadow in your tank under your Kessil.

I was just going to strap one of these to him to negate his effect.

[kien]

For flow in my tank I've been using two tunze 6105s. They are controlled by my Profilux controller and provide somewhat random water movement by alternating their speed. They've worked great for 3 years now but recently I have noticed that the Profilux control on one of them has started to act funny. I first noticed this when one of the power heads didn't stop when I activated the feed pause on my controller. Instead of trying to fix it I decided to just buy a new one and to re-purpose the defective one as a backup/general purpose mixing power head. Normally this would be somewhat of a trivial purchase. Swap out power head for a new one of the exact same model; YAWN! Well, when I got home with the new 6105 and opened it up I was pleasantly surprised by the changes and just had to post about it.

The first thing I noticed was that they now provide you with two options for the output nozzle/gate as seen here..



My original 6105 from 3 years ago didn't have those two options. Just the smaller of the two.

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

The other thing I noticed was the addition of noise/vibration dampeners as seen here (blue feet)..

[IMG][/IMG]

This is also quite a nice improvement. I have taken videos under water in my tank and when I play those videos back the powerheads can be quite noisy underwater! With an original 6105 in the tank and the new one I can definitely tell the difference even though the original 6105 wasn't that noisy (outside of the water) to begin with.

I'm quite happy with these improvements. The wider output makes a huge difference in my flow patterns. Not that I had any issues with flow from my original 6105s but flow just got more better! It's much wider and more randomer in areas that were not as randomy before. I like these so much that I'll be paying the Double-Ds another visit to pick up another one of these shortly to replace the other (older) 6105 that's still in the tank.

[FishyFishy!]

LOL the double D's!! Love it

[Arok3000]

Originally Posted by kien

Normally this would be somewhat of a trivial purchase. Swap out a 6105 power head for a new one of the exact same model; YAWN!

Originally Posted by kien

Normally this would be somewhat of a trivial purchase. Swap out a 6105.

Originally Posted by kien

trivial purchase. 6105.

[kien]

Originally Posted by Arok3000

Yes, I should have maybe qualified that a bit. Trivial in comparison to a Vortech MP40ES purchase

[lastlight]

Yeah the blue dampeners have been around for a bit and are rad. The wide flow shroud (which you could order on its own to save $) came about after the flow tests by ecotech showed the tunze line flowed far less than advertised. Your new pump should also have come with a 24v jumper to boost output.

I wish the nano streams had wide flow options too

[kien]

Originally Posted by lastlight

Yeah the blue dampeners have been around for a bit and are rad. The wide flow shroud (which you could order on its own to save $) came about after the flow tests by ecotech showed the tunze line flowed far less than advertised. Your new pump should also have come with a 24v jumper to boost output.

I wish the nano streams had wide flow options too

Ya I seemed to have missed that while episode about the flow. Funny how they still sell the 6105s with the smaller shroud though. Also, I tried looking for just the shroud on J&L but couldn't find it :-(

[kien]

Originally Posted by lastlight

Your new pump should also have come with a 24v jumper to boost output.

HOLY CRAP! I didn't even notice that those jumpers were in there! I plugged in the 24v jumper (default was the 18v) and I nearly blew the tentacles off my torch! So awesome, thanks for the tip! Going to have to play with my programming to spin them down lower periodically.

[kien]

So recently I had an opportunity to try out a Radion and a Kessil LED units to see how they compared. Two very different units but great at what they do and that is put out light. Not quite Metal Halide light but good enough I think.

Well, next up on my hit list is a GHL Mitras. First of all, this is one sexy unit! I'm a huge fan of silver. I believe they come in a black as well.

The control panel is quite easy to use and it's nice that it is on the side and not on the top like the Radion. I found the control panel on the Radion a bit of a pain to use. The GHL with its built in LCD panel is quite a nice treat.



And yes, they do come with their own sunglasses!



The Mitras is equipped with a generous 6 pods, each pod housing 12 LEDs with a mixture of Blues, Whites, Reds and Greens.



Just another quick disclaimer here. My intent is not to test the effectiveness of the LED unit. Rather, I am interested to see how the look compared to my tried and true Metal Halid+T5 combo. That is, can they match the aesthetics that I prefer?

For comparison sake I'm going to throw up my 250watt, 15K Metal Halide picture again. Note also that no T5s are on, just the Metal Halide. Also, these bulbs are about 8 months old so they are due for replacement which means they're probably burning closer to 12K or 13K.

Metal Halide.


Next up is the Mitras at full blast. All channels, all on. (idental camera exposure settings as the Metal Halide photo).


Immediately you can see that there is a $#!t load of light here! LIke I mean A LOT! Now I know why it came with sunglasses. Seriously, like HOLY ****.

But, clearly this isn't the ideal setting. There's way too much red here. Next I dialed down the Red channel to ZERO.



Still A LOT of light here! Plus, not a bad colour cast. I played around with the colour combinations a bit more (did I mention that I REALLY like the control panel? So nice!) to see if I could get something more in line with my taste. Here is the blue dialed down to something more appealing to me. Pretty close to 15K in my eyes.



All in all a very pleasing look. Not quite as bright as the halide but still a lot of light. The most light that I've seen from an LED at this colour temperature for sure.

Okay, so ya, this light KICKS ASS. However, it isn't perfect. Sadly, like many others this LED unit does suffer from a noticeable disco effect. Keep in mind that everyone's eyes are different and this effect may not be noticeable by everyone. I on the other hand could definitely notice the separation of lights on my sand bed. It wasn't as bad as some units that I've seen, but not as good as the Kessil. The Kessil with its tightly packed LED array pretty much eliminated this effect.

Kessil LED Array:


Mitras LED Array:


And here it is in all its glory (or gory?), the dreaded disco effect..







Keep in mind also that these photos exaggerate the effect because of the freeze frame nature of the dSLR camera. However, it's there, and as I said, some people will notice it and some will not.

Final thoughts.

1. This is one sexy light. The build quality is excellent and by far the best that I've see on the market. Clearly a lot of thought has gone into this unit with its generous distribution of pods to its user friendly control panel with LCD display. Plus, it comes with a freaking hanging kit!

2. The colours are quite nice with a virtually an infinite number of possibilities! Plus, damn this unit is BRIGHT!

3. Like with all LEDs you get the coveted caustic effect (ie, shimmering). Sadly, like with most LEDs the shimmering is also its Achilles heel as that's where the dreaded disco effect rears its ugly head. Well, I suppose it won't necessarily be ugly to everyone.

[Snappy]

What I find most amazing about the LED lighting is that it made all the stuff on the substrate disappear. It's like magic! Or perhaps the fish just moved them out of the way to clear the dance floor so they really groove to those disco effects.