250 DD with fish room

[bobyboy]

In my experience the MH put off significantly more heat, other than that not much difference personally.

 

[Matthias7]

I ended up going with the reef brite apex ready metal halide. I ordered 2 of the 250watt lamps. For bulbs I'm going to try the mega chrome 17.5k se bulbs

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Nice!

 

[tj w]

Very nice indeed, please keep us updated with pics and progress. Great job

 

[Matthias7]

Here are some updated pictures (display tank is really blue since my t5's are marginally operating at this point)

 

[Matthias7]

My apex should arrive early next week, I'm really excited about that. I have not had a controller before so this should hopefully up my game some. I have received my bulbs and ballasts for the metal halides, just waiting on the pendants now. Should be a big week coming up for me

 

[jsker]

Like the mangroves, and great system.

 

[Matthias7]

Getting ready for my apex

 

[Matthias7]

Exciting times. Apex Arrived and I was able to calibrate all the probes without any issue. I must say it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Will post some pictures of the new and improved fish room setup when I get my wires organized.

 

[chomoney]

Did you ever come up with a humidity solution for your fish room? Working through options on my end as well and would love to hear what you came up with.

 

[Matthias7]

I installed a bathroom exhuast fan but to be honest I have not had to use it. I live in the desert so the relative humidity here is really low 20%. The fish room tops out around 60%. It feel awesome in there compared to the dryness in our house, ha!

 

[Matthias7]

My orp is running around 270 consistently. Any orp experts out there think that ozone will help my system?
The other surprise for me is conductivity which is low around 27.5, with my refractometer I'm right at 1.026. I calibrated my apex probe and I believe it to be spot on. I think I will calibrate my refractometer and see if the numbers move closer. Any other suggestions would be awesome.

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Nice!

 

[SnookNRedZ]

Awesome looking system you have. I dream of the day I actually own my own house to where I can incorporate a fish room. You've done a great job dude! I'm from Florida so I understand the humidity issues. The only thing you really can do is add more air flow around the room and coming out, but with that comes more evaporation.

And you'll love the apex. Don't let it overwhelm you either, now a days there's plenty of demonstration and tutorial videos floating around the interwebz. Best of kic with it!

 

[chomoney]

I installed a bathroom exhuast fan but to be honest I have not had to use it. I live in the desert so the relative humidity here is really low 20%. The fish room tops out around 60%. It feel awesome in there compared to the dryness in our house, ha!

Good stuff!

 

[Matthias7]

D

Awesome looking system you have. I dream of the day I actually own my own house to where I can incorporate a fish room. You've done a great job dude! I'm from Florida so I understand the humidity issues. The only thing you really can do is add more air flow around the room and coming out, but with that comes more evaporation.

And you'll love the apex. Don't let it overwhelm you either, now a days there's plenty of demonstration and tutorial videos floating around the interwebz. Best of kic with it!

Thx. I was just trying to categorize what I liked the best about this system. The fish room is number one but automatic water changes and now the awesomeness of apex and what it offers are a close second

 

[Matthias7]

Metal halides are up and running. All I can say is wow my tank is way brighter. I'm still muddling through my apex controls on them. The color of the 17.5k megachromes is perfect right now I know it will change as they burn in. They do out off some heat but it's not intolerable and so far I have only gained about 0.5 degrees in the tank which is needed

 

[Matthias7]

Here is what the tank looks like now with 2 250 watt halides and 3 kessil a360 we. So much light now I can see diatoms on the sand that I didn't know I had

 

[Matthias7]

Going to upgrade the canopy to hide the fixtures and cables later today

 

[Matthias7]

I had a jebao rw15 quit on me this Saturday, was the 2nd of the two I bought originally about 2 years ago. What an upgrade this is for me. I have no complaints about the jebao's I bought them to mitigate the start up costs and they did the job well. The wavs are just awesome though so much controllability easy to install and easy to clean it looks like. I'm becoming a Neptune fanboy, ha!