I’m sorry that I haven’t had any updates as of late. Work has been hecktick and I took some time to get a couple quotes to upgrade my electric service.
What’s been on my mind the last couple weeks? Electricity and par! With my previous plan I has on the brink on running out of power. Now that I’ve realized I’ll neee more par over the 2 high par tanks I’ve been working on a solution. Today I finally tested the Hamilton cayman reflector and happy to report I’ve hit my goal of 400 par. With these reflectors being smaller than the others I’ll also have room to use some T5s as well. To cover the entire tank I’ll need 3 or possibly 4 fixtures per tank.
Adding these lights will leave me literally no room for additional pumps which is a problem considering half my bay is still empty. At this point i need to make a decision on my next move. Upgrade one or both of my services to allow more tanks or other hobbies. Upgrading my service would also allow me to use the larger fixtures with 1000w bulbs to simply the wiring and maintenance. With 1000s I can use 4 halides vs 8 halides and 8 t5s.
My plan for the next few days is to read every single thread on R2r and any article I can find regarding 1000w bulbs. I’m going to intodruce the marine pure blocks from my home system along with a few fish this week. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed at this point; 250amps seemed like a ton when I started and now it’s seeming like I’ll need double. The right thing to do doesn’t seem obvious yet, hopefully it’ll become clear to me soon. The parts for a new service aren’t much, but the labor makes me sick.
