btldreef
Moderator
You didn't offend. Honestly, I'm in a lot of pain (car accident) and over tired and just had my damn blue spot jawfish try to make a break for it! I could have worded my response better. My husband posted the original post about the LED's, he likes to leave out many details, LOL. And as I'm typing this, he attempted a jump again, UGH! There's one tiny hole and he's determined to get through it!
We've been following sooooooo many builds of these damn LED's. It seems that everyone is doing it differently. We do want SPS, but it's all staying up top. I want a solid, mixed reef. I don't want anything to dominate in the way of corals. My first love is acans, so we have to be careful to find a good balance between too much and too little lighting. I'd rather start off with less and add one, because people that go strong and have to back off end up with a lot more issues. I can supplement with halides while we're building or just throw the SPS in the frag tank, it's not imperative that this tank have perfect LED's from day one. I have more tanks/lights than I know what to do with and in the new house, we're probably only going to have 4 tanks in total. When it comes to these LED builds, I really only trust what the Acan Lighting guys say. Acan Lighting is basically the the "LED God" out on the east coast right now. Every LFS has them on their tanks and if you have LED's, they're either DIY or Acan Lighting. I would just buy their lights, but Mr. Fix It (my husband - Mr. BTLDreef) is determined to save money and make them himself, which I know will only end up costing more, LOL. The depth of the tank is a big deal. Believe me, I know. We have a 155 custom non-bow right now, it's almost 29" deep and that extra depth vs the standard 180, makes a HUGE difference. It was a big reason why we went with a 180 instead of a 225. On the 155, we're running 2 250watt DE halides and 1 150 watt DE halide, the 250's are running off of Ice Cap Ballasts so they're producing even more, plus we have the T5 supplemental lighting and it's still been a challenge to have enough lighting for SPS without burning them, it's a really fine balance. It's honestly made me hate SPS, lol, but my husband is determined to have these colored sticks in our reef.
He's planning a shallow tank in the center of the fish room, that's where the majority of the really crazy, extreme high light demanding corals are going to go along with clams. The goal is to make the tank a display from the top down. Should be really cool, especially for the clams, since that's how you get the best viewing.
We've been following sooooooo many builds of these damn LED's. It seems that everyone is doing it differently. We do want SPS, but it's all staying up top. I want a solid, mixed reef. I don't want anything to dominate in the way of corals. My first love is acans, so we have to be careful to find a good balance between too much and too little lighting. I'd rather start off with less and add one, because people that go strong and have to back off end up with a lot more issues. I can supplement with halides while we're building or just throw the SPS in the frag tank, it's not imperative that this tank have perfect LED's from day one. I have more tanks/lights than I know what to do with and in the new house, we're probably only going to have 4 tanks in total. When it comes to these LED builds, I really only trust what the Acan Lighting guys say. Acan Lighting is basically the the "LED God" out on the east coast right now. Every LFS has them on their tanks and if you have LED's, they're either DIY or Acan Lighting. I would just buy their lights, but Mr. Fix It (my husband - Mr. BTLDreef) is determined to save money and make them himself, which I know will only end up costing more, LOL. The depth of the tank is a big deal. Believe me, I know. We have a 155 custom non-bow right now, it's almost 29" deep and that extra depth vs the standard 180, makes a HUGE difference. It was a big reason why we went with a 180 instead of a 225. On the 155, we're running 2 250watt DE halides and 1 150 watt DE halide, the 250's are running off of Ice Cap Ballasts so they're producing even more, plus we have the T5 supplemental lighting and it's still been a challenge to have enough lighting for SPS without burning them, it's a really fine balance. It's honestly made me hate SPS, lol, but my husband is determined to have these colored sticks in our reef.
He's planning a shallow tank in the center of the fish room, that's where the majority of the really crazy, extreme high light demanding corals are going to go along with clams. The goal is to make the tank a display from the top down. Should be really cool, especially for the clams, since that's how you get the best viewing.
