AlanM

Rob, can you dim the d120 with an Apex? Last monkiboy had posted the 0-10v dimmable one wasn't available, I thought. If that's an option, I'll probably get some. Still thinking about the IT2040 or 2080 cause of the builtin control.

To turn on and off, yes. Not to dim, that I'm aware of.

There's no WAMAS discount for tickets to National Aquarium in Baltimore, is there? Just thought I'd check. Apparently there's a MD resident discount, but the website says some "blackout" dates may apply. We called and they don't know yet if tomorrow will be blacked out for the discount. Funny. We're planning to go with the kids tomorrow. I've never been there even though I've been to the DC one a few times (and can go for free as a DoC employee).

Posting this over here since I don't want to clutter up your group buy thread with questions. You said there that you have yours at 2.5 feet off the water. I'd really love to mount mine high like that. I was planning on 12 inches with 40-45 degree optics, but since I've never done it before. I am only just calculating 30inch*tan(20degrees)= 11 inch radius on a 18 inch deep tank 12 inches above the water which will hit the glass, but only by a few inches. Should I really be calculating by the FWHM of the lens or something and assuming that on a 40 degree lens has a FWHM of 20 inches and so 30inch*tan(10degrees) = 5.3 inch radius so lots of shadow around the edges at 12 inches for that lens? I'm getting a rimless tank and I think it will look much better with them that high or higher. The reason I'm getting a rimless tank is that I want to see the contents: critters, rock, sand, and water with as few distractions as possible. Not a big light hanging above or HOB pumps or plumbing drilled into the side or whatever. Maybe I should get 10 degree optics and recess them into the ceiling. 8)

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pizzaguy is right. See the Avast response to my newbie questions from a while ago on their forum here where he says for a CS1 a feed pump is required. http://wamas.org/forums/topic/53378-newbie-question-about-sumpskimmeroverflow-sizing/#entry448290 Also, this text from their product page for the CS1:

That sounds about right from when I was asking a while ago. Justin responded to one of my threads on the Avast forum with about that rate. As you've figured out it IS a recirculating skimmer, so the Sicce is just for the bubbles.

I'm curious about this too. I'm leaning towards Steve's LEDs drivers and posted my current guess at a build in the DIY forum just now. Only reason I'm not thinking of his Luxeon Rebel ES emitters over Cree XTE's is that he doesn't have optics available for his 3-up stars yet, and I want to hang my lights up off the water. Reefn, do you have any pics of those over the tank? I'm curious how high you have them and if you are seeing lots of light on the floor with no optics or if you think it's OK. I really like the look of your build. You did a nice job of making them not look very DIY. 8) Edit: I reread what you posted, and saw that you are using optics. You just don't have them installed in that picture. Do you get the "disco" effect folks talk about with your emitters that far apart? If disco is a myth, it would make building one much easier and make it much more flexible on optics.

For fun, attached is my current design for 75 or 90. Basically a bigger Maxspect Razor with colored LED's added using input from the nano-reef.com full spectrum thread that I think ridetheducati posted a while ago. It's overkill for a 75, but not much more expensive and easier for me to get than a 20% smaller one for a 75. I'd be running these Cree at 700mA instead of their rated max of 1500 because they're all on 3-up stars so the heat is a bit less distributed and they're harder to keep cool. The goal is to get the three-up blues and whites and the three-up colored ones packed in pretty tightly to form kind of bright pendants on purpose rather than to spread them evenly along the heatsink by using individual emitters in a checkerboard type pattern. When different colors are spread evenly with a few inches between you can get something derisively referred to as "disco" where the surface of the water makes the colored spots move around on the rocks and sand like in a night club. If you pack them in tight, then you get a bit less even coverage, but less possibility for a moving club-light effect. At least that's the theory of the lighting "experts" over there at nano-reef.com. I buy it (and soon will literally buy it), but haven't tried it myself. I could use 3 individual heatsinks, but one long one leaves room to move things around, and the MakersLED heatsinks are really pretty. Not as pretty as the Razor, but nice. I'd buy all of the LED's from LEDGroupBuy because they sell three-ups with optics that go on them. With 40 degree optics I can mount them 12-16 inches at least over the tank and get good light. I'd buy the drivers and power supplies from StevesLEDs because he makes PWM drivers that can be dimmed down to 1% unlike the Meanwell's which go dark at 10%. Mostly I'm making it this complicated because I'm enjoying it and will have fun playing with the 4 channels of dimming. Looks like total cost is going to be around $900 or so, which might still be too much for me, so I might end up paring it down a bit.

I'm working up a DIY layout for my coming 75 gallon one. The lighting forum at nano-reef.com is pretty good for talking about "full spectrum" LED layouts. Lots of different strategies there. The reef lighting nerds there like the Maxspect Razor, btw, of all of the non-DIY ones. Prob need 2 of the 120W ones of those to cover 90g. They're really pretty looking. Very thin and quiet and come with built in dimming controller so you don't have to rig something. I may still go with that for my 75 which is just a little shallower than your 90 because they're so pretty. The evergrow ones look like a really good buy for Bridgelux LED's. Would get in on that if I wasn't perverse and wanting to do it myself. When I start a build thread after my stuff gets here in a week I will go into detail on building the lights. Been calculating mA, W, V, lm, mW, etc, for about a week now and I think I'm settling on a config, but it may still change. Won't be done by mid-January, though. Congrats on the new addition. Make sure you practice good quarantine procedures. 8)

I agree with what others said. I love the circular lagoon look. Very nice.

coupon code for ledtric from nano-reef. IAMNR gives $10 off.

This one looks nice, cheap too. The folks over at nano-reef.com like it. http://www.ledtric.com/led-components/ledtric-par38-full-spectrum-18w-reeflamp/

Do you really have to feed them 3 times per day like LA site says?

So I have an mr5 that I'm building now for a biopellets reactor. I'll send the output directly in to the cs1 that I'm also building (or trading for an already built one). I have questions about the mr5 build with the nozzle. Should the nozzle end 2.5 inches from the bottom of the reactor, or should the pipe be cut to that length and then the nozzle installed which would make it end around an inch from the bottom of the reactor? Also, what I got a half liter of pellets. How much should I put in and what flow should I aim for to both keep these things moving and also feed the cs1 at a good rate. Would the 350 GPH be good for both of those things? I was planning to put the pump before the mr5 to push water through it and then into the skimmer. Or should I put one pump on the mr5 and dump it in the vicinity of another pump that would feed the skimmer so I can have independent flows through each and the skimmer would get some non pellet water and some from pellets?

Check out YouNeedABudget as a software package to help. Trial version for a month. Works on smartphones and computers and keeps data in sync across platforms. Imports very well from banks and credit cards. It lets you budget plan in a way that my wife and I have found pretty intuitive. Their website spells out the process pretty well. Much better than the spreadsheet I was using previously and the planning aspect makes it better than free online finance programs like mint.com or something. Law school debt is a H-E-double hockey sticks of a burden to start a life with, let alone a marriage and house/kids. You would be well served to make a plan for dealing with that issue and any that your fiancée has before the ceremony. That plan probably should not include lights with a spread that would allow you to grow sps at the edge of your tank. Others here are right. Don't sell it. And definitely don't buy something "smaller" because many costs are nearly fixed with one of these things. Just don't buy. Anything. It will help. If having this 150g tank that you're not satisfied with is too big of a temptation for you to avoid buying hardware for when you know you should be paying down debt and saving, then sell it and run away from it. Plan to reevaluate when you're not 250 large in the hole.

Now that's a big clam. Be careful he doesn't eat the trigger!

Where'd all that salt go? It doesn't evaporate. Is it possible that you have a swing arm hydrometer that had a bubble trapped on the arm or a sticky hinge or a poorly calibrated refractometer and you've been running at 1.016 all along even in the initial fill or maybe the current 1.016 reading is incorrect. Unless you've been doing water changes with fresh water, you should not have seen a drop in salinity.

Shadowbox! http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1868825

I had a nice box of stuff from Avast waiting for me when I got home tonight. Shipped yesterday. It's nice to be local. Will be a few fun projects. also have a couple of helpers eager to get started:

If its mastic that comes wet in a can it should be water soluble to some extent? Maybe lots of water and a plastic bristle brush and lots of scrubbing. After all, it dries. In the future you could try coating the tile with some kind of a release agent before putting it up like grout sealer.

I remember reading that they get a film on them and then start getting a little sticky against each other. Wonder if there's some relation happening here between your new biopellets that aren't rolling anymore, the mass dieoff that happened a month or so back, the skimmer that was making a lot of dark brown skimmate even though the tank was basically empty, the cloudiness that was in your tank for a while which was then followed by a forest of hair algae. Seems like something biological is swinging around. Maybe someone who knows about reef tank biology could connect the dots between the various symptoms that have come up on your tank build thread over the past few months and come up with a diagnosis.

You cutting chunks of him off from time to time for nutrient export? 8)

Did the guy give you any discount for not disclosing that his tank had a big chip out of the front of it? Would have been hard for me not to despair after having driven all that way and seen that.

I probably won't have access to a group of juvenile clowns, but that would be cool. The green yuma Zygote2k posted looks cool. I was thinking instead of an anemone I'd put in a long tentacle fungia plate coral. Even has a mouth like a nem and seems to be way less trouble to take care of according to what I'd read. None of the parents will know the difference.