Ok, so I'm not exactly a new member. I've actually been around for a little over three years but have been just lurking in the shadows gathering info and grabbing up good deals from the marketplace. I origionally joined up back in 2011 with the intention of going reef with my 265. Unfortunatly I was quickly scared away by the intimidating price of undertaking a reef conversion of that magnitude. I ended up going back to keeping tanganyikan cichlids but never quite lost the desire to try my hand at the mystical art that is Reefkeeping. I decided that I was going to take another stab at it and got a JBJ Picotope in December 2013. I took my time in cycling it and meanwhile upgraded the filtration to a modded AC70 for flow and refugium as well as upgrading the lighting to a par38 36w OC Reef spot. After getting some great frags from Peter (panayiote73) I learned my first lesson in reefkeeping, Redundancy is your friend! I nearly nuked the whole tank by depending on a cheap plastic needle hydrometer. Fortunately I figured out what was going wrong and saved nearly all the corals. Now I test with two different hydrometers and have a refractometer on order from amazon. Since I am now gaining confidence in my abilities and knowledge I decided to grab a reefready 58gal and move toward the next step in my addiction. I also grabbed a sweet 5 stage BRS RODI off trevor and have an asm mini-g skimmer coming from ebay. As soon as I get this I will be doing the recirc mod, mesh mod and direct feeding it from my overflow. I'd like to move my spot light from the jbj to the new tank when it is set up but I am looking for advice in this area. (Keep in mind that I'm on a very limited budget and I'm also very capable of and enjoy DIY projects) What should I do for additional lighting? Should I just get a few more of the same spots and mount them all in the hood? What's your opinion of the chinese knockoffs? Looking forward to any and all input!
I'm actually doing it this time........
- Thread starter toddhgr
- Start date
badlands25
Non-member
Do a DIY led build. Don't bother with the knockoffs as more than a few have had plenty of issues with them.
Marshall O
Non-member
I made a DIY kit for my 28 nano from Rapid LED. Came out great I think. However once you start pricing out everything needed for a kit, you end up around the same price as some decent fixtures on the market.
Moe_K
Stabbed by Foulke
Yeah, there are lots of people who keep SPS under T5s.
Another option: Why not go with a metal halide? You can do a MH retrofit for pretty cheap these days.
evan.lundberg4
Non-member
Check out reef radiance. I have two of their fixtures and they're sort affordable. I'm running the DM-155e fixtures and I'm really happy with them. They run around 160 (not 100% on that exact number).
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SilverWolf229
Non-member
You could get an AI Hydra.
Marshall O
Non-member
One of the value fixtures covers a 2' area nicely. 3' you will definitely have some shadows on the edges, unless you raise it way up in which case you would have spillage. I have three of the value fixtures over my 6' 125.
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