DaveWF
09/01/2011, 09:36 PM
I've had my 29g Oceanic Biocube for just about 1 year now. I thought I'd save some money about 6 month ago and went to NanoTuners.com and got their PC Biocube upgrade kit. That brought me to 4 PC bulbs with a total of 144 watts. It did wonders for my tank, but I quickly realized that I had essentially wasted my money (and it wasn't cheap!) since, although my softies and LPS did well, any SPS' I had in the tank survived, but they stayed brown.
This is the underside of my old hood showing the upgraded PC layout:
http://greatcomputerservice.com/pictures/aquarium/LEDs/IMG_20110831_205105.jpg
At this point, I was long overdue to replace 2 of my PC bulbs and decided to take the plunge and do the LED upgrade before I went out and dropped some more money on bulbs. Thankfully, I've read enough threads on here to learn that the cheapest available is certainly not the best and, after a little research, decided to go with a CMAS favorite LED supplier, www.ReefLEDLights.com.
Like many of us, I called first to get some advice and spent probably close to an hour across multiple calls talking with Bill as he explained that essentially, all I really needed was their 24 LED kit. I did the standard 2/1 blue/white route with 16 premium blues, 8 premium whites and I opted to add 1 red LED for a total of 25. I also added a fan kit, medusa wiring harness, solderless connectors for 25 LEDs and I paid the extra $30ish to have the heatsink pre-drilled. The setup arrived and I excitedly unpacked everything. Despite watching the videos and reading the FAQs, this was still my first LED build and I wanted a little bit of hand-holding just to help point me in the right direction. I had purchased a DIY controller from Tom (TheReefNinja) and asked him if he could come by and just help get me started. Unfortunatley (or fortunately, as it turned out), he said that he was headed to to Ricks (FireBretha) for the BBQ that he had posted up. He told me that I REALLY should join him and bring the LED kit. At the time, I hadn't realized that Rick was a co-owner of ReefLEDLights.com and didn't feel real comfortable about bringing the kit and "stealing the spotlight" from a fellow members BBQ. Little did I know! I received an email from Rick with his address & phone number that ended with "BRING THE LED KIT!!" I knew at that point that everything was going to be fine.
It may not be directly related, but let me get this out there... Rick was an incredible host and his family was wonderful. Let me tell you, his Venezuelan hot dogs jalapeno popper dip and green chili pepper dip were DA BOMB!
Rick and his beautiful doberman, Loki
http://greatcomputerservice.com/pictures/aquarium/LEDs/IMG_20110828_165419.jpg
So somehow between all the food, conversations, aquarium viewing, smack-talk, etc, we found a little time to take a look at my kit and start putting some stuff together.
Unpacking everything and looking it all over. It should be noted that this is NOT the hood that I pictured earlier. I was incredibly lucky and traded TCMFish a handful of corals for a structurally mint Biocube hood. He said the lights had some issues, but I was going to tear them out anyway, so that didn't matter:
http://greatcomputerservice.com/pictures/aquarium/LEDs/IMG_20110828_182654.jpg
Let me tell you, nothing gives you a warmer, fuzzier feeling that letting the owner of the company assist you in putting your build together. And on that point, he was awesome about it. I fully expected him to jump in and say "this is what you want to do", but instead he really just sat back and asked me, "how do YOU want to arrange the LEDs?" He gave advice on grouping "don't put all the blue on one side and all the white on the other", but really left it up to me and was appropriately complimentary along the way. He really made me feel like this was MY build, but performed under expert supervision - I couldn't have asked for him to handle it any differently.
I finally figured out a good layout:
http://greatcomputerservice.com/pictures/aquarium/LEDs/IMG_20110828_184725.jpg
Everyone hung around for the into, but here was the serious "hands-on crew" that assisted with the build:
http://greatcomputerservice.com/pictures/aquarium/LEDs/IMG_20110828_185424.jpg
This is the underside of my old hood showing the upgraded PC layout:
http://greatcomputerservice.com/pictures/aquarium/LEDs/IMG_20110831_205105.jpg
At this point, I was long overdue to replace 2 of my PC bulbs and decided to take the plunge and do the LED upgrade before I went out and dropped some more money on bulbs. Thankfully, I've read enough threads on here to learn that the cheapest available is certainly not the best and, after a little research, decided to go with a CMAS favorite LED supplier, www.ReefLEDLights.com.
Like many of us, I called first to get some advice and spent probably close to an hour across multiple calls talking with Bill as he explained that essentially, all I really needed was their 24 LED kit. I did the standard 2/1 blue/white route with 16 premium blues, 8 premium whites and I opted to add 1 red LED for a total of 25. I also added a fan kit, medusa wiring harness, solderless connectors for 25 LEDs and I paid the extra $30ish to have the heatsink pre-drilled. The setup arrived and I excitedly unpacked everything. Despite watching the videos and reading the FAQs, this was still my first LED build and I wanted a little bit of hand-holding just to help point me in the right direction. I had purchased a DIY controller from Tom (TheReefNinja) and asked him if he could come by and just help get me started. Unfortunatley (or fortunately, as it turned out), he said that he was headed to to Ricks (FireBretha) for the BBQ that he had posted up. He told me that I REALLY should join him and bring the LED kit. At the time, I hadn't realized that Rick was a co-owner of ReefLEDLights.com and didn't feel real comfortable about bringing the kit and "stealing the spotlight" from a fellow members BBQ. Little did I know! I received an email from Rick with his address & phone number that ended with "BRING THE LED KIT!!" I knew at that point that everything was going to be fine.
It may not be directly related, but let me get this out there... Rick was an incredible host and his family was wonderful. Let me tell you, his Venezuelan hot dogs jalapeno popper dip and green chili pepper dip were DA BOMB!
Rick and his beautiful doberman, Loki
http://greatcomputerservice.com/pictures/aquarium/LEDs/IMG_20110828_165419.jpg
So somehow between all the food, conversations, aquarium viewing, smack-talk, etc, we found a little time to take a look at my kit and start putting some stuff together.
Unpacking everything and looking it all over. It should be noted that this is NOT the hood that I pictured earlier. I was incredibly lucky and traded TCMFish a handful of corals for a structurally mint Biocube hood. He said the lights had some issues, but I was going to tear them out anyway, so that didn't matter:
http://greatcomputerservice.com/pictures/aquarium/LEDs/IMG_20110828_182654.jpg
Let me tell you, nothing gives you a warmer, fuzzier feeling that letting the owner of the company assist you in putting your build together. And on that point, he was awesome about it. I fully expected him to jump in and say "this is what you want to do", but instead he really just sat back and asked me, "how do YOU want to arrange the LEDs?" He gave advice on grouping "don't put all the blue on one side and all the white on the other", but really left it up to me and was appropriately complimentary along the way. He really made me feel like this was MY build, but performed under expert supervision - I couldn't have asked for him to handle it any differently.
I finally figured out a good layout:
http://greatcomputerservice.com/pictures/aquarium/LEDs/IMG_20110828_184725.jpg
Everyone hung around for the into, but here was the serious "hands-on crew" that assisted with the build:
http://greatcomputerservice.com/pictures/aquarium/LEDs/IMG_20110828_185424.jpg