icecool2

Great post! The growth is clearly strong on everything. Do you have a shot from the same angle as the original from 2010?

I think there is more to this debate than simply light output versus power. By the numbers you provided, the Luxeon LEDs put out 15% more light at the same drive current. What is missing from this however is the longevity of the LED itself. The Luxeon LEDs have a tendency to degrade rapidly when they are run in even slightly elevated temperatures. Here's the proof... At 700mA drive at 70C junction temperature (not unreasonable) the Rebels have a 10,000 hour lifetime while the Crees have a 85,000 hour lifetime. I'll leave it up to you whether you think a 15% increase in light output is worth a 88% decrease in LED life. Rebel Lifetime Cree Lifetime

BTAs can take a while to find a happy spot. I would leave the flow as low as you can until it has stayed put for several days. They like to have their foot hidden in the rocks, but they will continue to wander until they find an area with lighting and flow that they like.

Thanks. There is in partly why this is still a work in progress. The ultimate intention is to do some power calculations at various depths and actually make them meaningful. At the moment, this simply calculates coverage and does not take into consideration power. EDIT: Along those lines, anyone who's good at math and wants to help, please feel free to shoot me a PM or an email.

Awesome spreadsheet! Do you have the information for which Cree line each color is from? Also, would you mind if I shared this? I know some people who would really like this info.

This is still very much a work in progress, but I made a LED calculator which determines how many LEDs (minimum) you need to completely cover a tank based on mounting height, optics and spacing. Use it with a grain of salt and I'm open to suggestions and inputs. http://www.engineersreef.com/The_Engineers_Reef/LED_Calculator.html

I'm official now Looking forward to being a part of the club.

They are great indicators for when your alk/cal are off in the tank. Mine do the same thing. If I don't top off with kalk water once a week, I start to see bleaching.

I think this is a common misconception. Glass only has a refractive index of 1.5 the loss is EXTREMELY low. Depending on the type of glass you may block a good deal of the UV (depending on the light type). That is also up for debate whether UV makes a difference or not.

Doesn't sound like too much flow to me, but it will certainly be a lot for some corals. You just need to be aware of the needs of each coral as you put it in your system. For example, if you are adding your first softie and lets say it is a mushroom. They don't like much of any flow, but they also typically like lower lighting. That makes you life pretty simple, you can place it slightly shaded by some LR and blocked from the direct flow.

Thanks!

wogga... very cool. Chad: I was told about Honey Pig, but haven't made the ride yet. My friend owns a Korean restaurant in NJ and it is RIDICULOUSLY good. Every time I drive up there I have to stop and get as much as I can.

Awesome! We'll be moved in after July 1, so I should hopefully be able to come and meet up. Thanks for the welcome and the tips! In some ways I am very much the stereotypical engineer. I'd like to think I'm on the more outgoing extreme than most though I think we'll be venturing into the city fairly often for food finds. My absolute must find is a good Korean restaurant. Really slim pickings here. EDIT: Wogga.... are you holding a lion in your picture?

Thank you both!

Well said wogga.

To me, it was missing that purple punch. I could push on the blues, but it starts to get that windexy look that I don't like. Personal preference weighs in on that one for sure.

Quite the can of bristle worms here... A bit of background.... I got into LED's in 2008 and built one of the first large fixtures. Mine is 4' long and is completely DIY from the fixture to the drive electronics. My fixture has been supporting my reef tank successfully for 4+ years and it is still running strong today. I've only had to replace one power supply and that was my own fault. IMO LEDs are a great alternative to MH. They offer reduced heat, reduced maintenance and reduced cost of operation. That being said, we need to be careful when comparing the two. For years, we looked at how many Watts of MH lighting you had and simple PAR readings. The problem is that this same test doesn't hold true for LEDs. We need a test that is effective and meaningful for both. For this, we need to analyze the actual spectrum of light. That is starting to get off topic though... Cree started the high powered LED market and are still very much the lead in innovation. That being said, there will always be generics. I run all Cree LEDs on my tank, but I've seen plenty of people have great success with Chinese no-names as well. With all of them, the biggest factor to consider is how many hours they continue to drive at their specified color. Only Cree puts this information out consistently. Others don't. Essentially, all LEDs will shift in color (just like MH) as they age. With LEDs that can take tens of thousands of hours if they are used properly (ie proper drive, proper temps). EDIT: This is called the L70, the number of hours of run time until the output reduces to 70% of nominal. For me, I run 1:1 RB/NW Crees with 2-T12 True Actinics. The actinics provide the pop that the LEDs just can't match. One final note, if you see a fixture that doesn't use optics on the LEDs, you should question the design. Most LEDs have 180 degree optics which means you are wasting 50% of the light to areas you don't care about. I run 60 degree optics and have my fixture mounted 8" above the water.

I had it happen with a bad batch of filter floss. Drove me nuts for weeks until I figured it out. Like others said, I would just turn the skimmer off for a few days. A lot of additives will make your skimmer go nuts.

Thanks! Yep, we've been there. A weird spot if I do say so... 1/3 Thai restaurant, 1/3 sushi house, 1/3 dive bar. We were very confused when we walked in and were seated in a different restaurant than we walked into. We really like the cuban place next door and Burger Bros the next block up.

Sweet looking tank! Are you doing a bean animal setup?

It's all good! I appreciate the tips none-the-less. We've been to Sushi Hana, not great, but pretty good for the area. Haven't been to Egyptian Pizza, we'll have to check that out.

I should have been more specific about that... we like to try off the beaten path type places and international foods. Not so much the expensive side of things.

Monsters! Those look like polycheate (sp?) worms to me. Very fat, kinda smooth on the top and bluish/green/gray? I'm not saying it isn't possible, just trying to see what else it could be.

Thanks. We really like it up here. It will be nice to be closer to DC though. We're total foodies and we're excited for all of the new restaurants we can go to. Haha, thanks! I got tired of not finding any fun reefing shirts, so I made a couple You can always tell who is a reefer and who isn't when you wear it. If you get a smile when they read it, they're in the know. If you get a confused look, they clearly aren't.

Not to get too far off topic, but here's a lot of info on asterinas: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-06/ac/feature/index.php http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-12/rs/index.php http://reefkeeping.com/joomla/index.php/current-issue/article/45-reefkeeping-101- http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-04/rs/index.php