Blastin' Plasmas

Just to get a spot in line...

Not so great FTS at 50% lighting and a couple of top down shot from last night

looking great! Do you have a dimmer hooked up? What brand of plasmas are those?

*throws LEDs away*

durp. excuse the ignorance. Wow.. only 50%.. have you tested your PAR?

OMG PAR whats the PARR OMG

My one reef brite prolly has like 50 "par" on the bottom... who gives a fuck about PAR.. that's the same as "It's got 587 horses" ... but.. can you fucking drive it?

Everyone wants to overkill on the light... lesson learned from the 55g, if you blaze high light you may have a hard time keeping lower light awesomeness.

However acro dominated tanks and what not that are wall to wall acros and some others are exceptions IMO... however 1600w of MH + sups on a 120-180g is just insane.

Par Readings are at post #48
http://www.cvreefers.org/showthread.php?14741-Jestersix-Not-A-Pico-150-G&p=846391153&viewfull=1#post846391153

Very nice. Plasmas will definitely be an option in the future. Glad to see a tank with them so early in the game.

Nice... Damn those things are bright!!!! Looks like they have nice spread also..

Thanks Dom.

Thanks for the assist Dom! Saves me from posting the crappy PAR pics here...

Let's see...these are Stray Light Optical's Seashine Plasmas - 290W each. They use the same dimmer/driver as most LEDs. I'm using the Reefkeeper Lite with ALC module to handle the dimming function. Right side comes on first, an hour later the left side...then dimming in the evening right side then left side. Light cycle starts at 7AM and ends at 8:30PM.

Lights can dim from 100% down to 20%. At 100% you get about 97% color rendition which means it looks just about like natural sunlight. I like it without all the blue personally, but we are going to add a 48" Reefbrite all blue for evening viewing, because it is fun to have the corals "pop" a bit! AT 20% the ligt looks like a nice 14k, almost a 20K.

A couple more pics

The clams love the plasma lights.The smaller blue clam was only about 2 inches when we picked it up - now almost 6 inches! The Acans are just now starting to adjust to the lighting - I've been moving them a bit to try and find the right spot, seems like they are starting to color up and seeing some new heads growing. Finally!!

I love these lights, but it is new territory. My Millis love it, the clams eat up the PAR and the RBTAs are doing great. My opther SPS and LPS seem to take a bit more work trying to find out what makes them happy. I have charted the PAR all over the tank so I can track what does well where. Of course, the tank is only about 2 months ld, so it will be a while before it really settles in. Frags are growing out, so give it a couple of years and hopefully all will be rocking!!

THese shots are with the lights at 100%

The last shot is dopeeeee looking man!

Thanks Kray! The shot from is upstairs, one of my favorite places to watch the tank. Usually when I'm up there in the evening I take the screens off.

great shots!

Oh yeah, picked up a 48" all blue Reef Brite strip for the tank - makes the tank look like a black light poster! It is not very noticeable with the plasmas at full bore, but we bought it to show off the colors when folks come over to see the tank. I'll try and get some pics this weekend.

A couple people have asked about the coverage with the plasmas. This pic is with the lights at about 35%, with only the left side on. From the center of the light to the left side of the tank is 28 inches...



For all the zombies...



And this one just because I like my Scolies...

wow only 35%!... thats a nice spread!! sweet man

Spread really doesn't change with the ramp up, just intensity. I used that pic because it makes the light pattern really obvious with the dark edges.

hows the cost of running them compared to MH?

They are each pulling 290 watts at full power. Light like a 400W MH on steroids and uses electricity like a 250W MH.

definately going to look into getting these!

After the BAR swap I went by to check out Neptune's (What a great shop! Another reason I miss living in the Bay Area)- Robert had a 48" Reefbrite all blue...so we added some blue. Got to meet Kray and torture myself over all of the things I didn't get to come home with. Just running them in the evenings and for visitors to add some pop. Using the Sony pocket cam we get this horrid over saturated shot, but you get the idea:

Now that is cool!

It looks like a freakin' black light poster when it is just the LEDs. Crazy how much light the strip puts out. Of course you hardly see it when the plasmas are blasting .

sweet addition!