RedSea Reefer 350 - and so it begins

[dacianb]

I just received the connectors for the lights - power and comm too. Are waterproof industrial grade connectors capable to handle the high currents of lights, but also salt and humidity.
Currently I am using some "domestic" style and after a year above saltwater are very corroded and have to clean them from time to time.

 

[dacianb]

This weekend I went to shopping again (for a refractometer) and returned home with a Coral Beauty Angel. I normally like them, but not special.
I saw 3 such guys in tanks at shop, nothing happened, but then I saw the 4th one and was "love at first sight" - nice color patterns and some fluo blue on him made me buy it in an instant . Was so small, beautiful and active - swimming all over the tank like following me that I cannot resist to it.
I know it may nip at corals, but also I read some threads that mostly is OK. Tangs and blennies are often nipping coral structures making them retract, shrimps runs with those pointy legs everywhere, making corals to close - I dont think another nipper will do a great difference. I dont have anything than common and cheap corals, so eventual losses are not reason to panic.
For the weekend I didnt saw it as went hiding in the rocks, but yesterday was keeping his nose out of cave and today was swimming around (not far from his cave thou). The kole tang showed some "I am the boss here", but nothing special behaviour. The lyretail anthias chase him from time to time, but again nothing to worry about. Yellow tang completely ignored him, as usual. Hope will get along and will be a nice citizen.

Also, thanks to the new refractometer I saw that my salinity is at 1.030 - until then I considered to have water at 1.024 based on densimeter. Now slowly will have to reduce it at 1.025-26. Probably reason of my unusual high Ca and Mg are coming from too high sality. Lesson learned.

 

[dacianb]

Finally side covers are done.

Aluminium custom made and electrostatic field paint for heavy duty environment.
The 2 "wings" allow me to mount the lights in rail systems and to move them easily or to hang them as well.

Large number of holes are necessary for air flow, initially were smaller, but the air is rather noisy and almost whistle through them

 

[dacianb]

Power boards finalized. Theoretically this week-end I can start the lights (at least with half of leds mounted, as I still miss some leds)

Here is one of the boards.

 

[dacianb]

Of course my wife had different weekend plans than me, so not too much time to work on lights, but still enough time to do tank maintenance, buy 2 nice corals and solder 64 LEDs on 4 boards. Tested and works great.

All 4 boards are the same, on each light module will use 2, solving channel 1,2 and 5.
So on each board I put:
- line A - 3X Oslon Square Neutral White with CRI 90 + 2X Oslon Square Deep Blue (440-450 range) - channel 5
- line B - 6 X Oslon Square Deep Blue (440-450 range) - channel 2
- line C - 2X Prolight Opto violet (395-405 nm range) + 3 X Prolight Opto violet (430 nm)

 

[dacianb]

I went a bit further, in first pic are the 3 thermal switches mounted - the 2x blue ones will shut down the lights when sensors get to 60°C and the black one on top is the fan start/stop system (fan on at 50°C and off at 30C°). Heatsinks and sensors are not aligned / screws not tightened yet.
On the second pic I mounted 4 boards on each plate (2 with leds on, 2 only as dummy to check holes alignments). Removing the protection foil is now visible how nice and shiny this part is

 

[dacianb]

Finally a weekend with a lot of free time, so I worked hard on the lights and are almost finalized (actually works great above tank already, but I still mis the top covers (to hide electronics), but is just a visual detail, not a functional one.
Still the lights are using only half of the planned leds, but the missing ones will be added a bit later - just have to be sure if I will need some new, different colors

During mounting things.... damn so many wires - by the way, this is the living room table - so bet my wife was not happy



Here is the light with all wires where should be and all side covers mounted - just the fan is missing

Finally the fan is in:

And a view of bottom part - splash screen mounted (I used Lexan sheets as are way superior to regular PMMA) - still not all leds in, this is the reason of the hanging wires around. Once will add the missing boards, all wires will get into place.


Some more details....


And finally mounted on the tank. With details about rails will come back later

 

[dacianb]

Another big improvement for my tank this weekend was to add more flow - a lot more flow
Right now I have installed 2 x Jebao RW8 - 8000l/h (but tuned to low speed for the moment) + 2 x Sicce Nano 2000l/h and the return pump of another 4000 l/h giving me a total of 85-90X circulation / hour.

It is too much for the moment, all fishes were scared about new storm, so I lowered things a bit and will go higher gradually.
I installed all pumps in a big X, each pump targeting the opposite corner - the random flow from Jebaos, together with the return pump in center creates various waves and vortexes randomly in the tank.

 

[dacianb]

A quick phone picture with the 2 modules installed over tank. Even if light is uniform, if corals grow too large there may hit the shadow cones. So I ordered some 25 cm feets for the light ramps to rise the module higher.
Also due to high flow in tank, now waves are few mm under the lights and already salt builds on splash screens.

Please ignore the left side of rockwork - need to add more rocks and make it look more like right side

 

[dacianb]

Back again after a while....
As I wasnt quite happy with light distribution, I build some feets to the existing bridge in a way to adjust the position of lights on vertical until will get the "perfect" spot. Here is how tanks is today. Still have to cut down extra length of feets, but will be done sooner or later .
Everything in tank is doing great with a small remark that I have NO3 level at 0.00 and even with massive feeding stays there. I started to add coral food as corals seems to loose colors.

 

[dacianb]

And some of the corals as today

 

[dacianb]

and couple more

 

[dfordiani]

What lights are you using?

Sent from my SM-G925P using Tapatalk

 

[dacianb]

What lights are you using?

Sent from my SM-G925P using Tapatalk

Scroll a bit on earlier posts - I describe in details the complete build of lighting system.

 

[nanoreefing4fun]

@dfordiani

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