Vertex Illumina Official Thread

Alabamareef · Jul 2, 2013

An offical question and answere thread for the Vertex Illumina owners/potential owners. I myself have a SR 260/1500 with a few upgrades and have been very happy for over a year. There are a lot of little things I've learned over the past year and would love to share info with other owners or potiential owners. Please No comparing of lights as there are a ton of threads about that.

This is my current light configuration. Thought this may be a good starting point:

jayhawk · Jul 19, 2013

Do you have a mixed tank? If not, SPS or LPS? I just unboxed and assembled my 2" 260 for my 66 gallon. The light setup seems daunting but as with anything, it will make sense as I use it. I like the screen shot you provided. It helps out a lot. I currently have two 28g nanos and I am strictly LPS in one and mixed in the other. I will likely be all LPS when I transition everything to the 66. SPS has been looking bad lately and I am not wanting to kill anything...else. Good thread, I hope it gets some traction.

Zero Nitrates · Aug 9, 2013

I love the Illumina lights.
I set the lights up to mimic a light pattern in a shallow reef. I read about the pattern in "The Reef Aquarium".
Basically the light ramps up slowly then has some breaks during the day a quick drop off at the end of the day.
Have fun reefing!

TD2K · Aug 9, 2013

I'll post my program soon. I also have the 260, 5' long model. I added 4 UV and 3 Red pads to it. Love the light, I don't have it near turned up to 100% and it's super bright, all corals are growing like crazy. I've melted a few corals as well

My tank is 72Lx30Wx24T

Zero Nitrates · Aug 9, 2013

Do you guys like the UV and Red additions?

TD2K · Aug 9, 2013

I think the red causeed some algae issues, I got red/brown algae all over the surface of my water when I turned them up. I had to move my MP40s up higher to really aggitate the surface to get it filterd out to rid of it. I have them turned way down now, peaking at 15 or 20%, can't remember for sure. I think I have the UVs turned down pretty low too. Don't know that they're really doing all that much, but I have them so I might as well get some use out of them.

Zero Nitrates · Aug 9, 2013

I think the red causeed some algae issues, I got red/brown algae all over the surface of my water when I turned them up. I had to move my MP40s up higher to really aggitate the surface to get it filterd out to rid of it. I have them turned way down now, peaking at 15 or 20%, can't remember for sure. I think I have the UVs turned down pretty low too. Don't know that they're really doing all that much, but I have them so I might as well get some use out of them.

Thanks for the info!

TD2K · Aug 9, 2013

of course the multi-color pads were released shortly after I bought the UV and Reds. *sigh*

TD2K · Aug 9, 2013

I think the determining factor with these lights was that I could have one 1 fixture hanging over the tank instead of 4 or 5 small ones. For now, our tank is open, so the light fixture's look was important.

FTS showing the fixture over our tank. This was taken around 4:30 or 5:00, so well on the "ramp down" period. They peak about 2:00.

revhtree · Aug 9, 2013

Tank looks nice!

Zero Nitrates · Aug 9, 2013

Nice tank!
I need to hang mine!

TD2K · Aug 9, 2013

Hubby wants some kind of canopy up there, with the 40" tall stand plus the tank, the lights do blind you a bit when walking up to the tank. I'd like to leave them hanging so they get plenty of cool air flow, and have a canopy built around them but with no top on it (too tall for anyone to see there's no top) but I havne't figured out how I want to build it yet. Want it to still be easy to to tank maintenance, by either removing the front panel or lifting it up or something. If I hung them inside a canopy, it would have to be a really tall canopy and I'm not really wanting that.

Zero Nitrates · Aug 9, 2013

That sounds great. I was thinking of something similar.

jt17 · Aug 21, 2013

Anyone else having trouble setting the light to track from west to east? I've had the 200 5' for about 1 year and a few days ago I finally programmed it to track across the tank. Problem is it just lights the first pad and stays there. I reload the program and then it works. It's done this everyday since the new program. Also, does anyone know what "ftdi during program saving" means. I know it means the program upload didn't work but I'm not sure why. I switch to moon or special programs and come back and then it sometimes uploads. This why it's taken a year to try the new program because I'm not good with computers and I would keep running into these snags so when I finally got it to work I left it alone. Also when I close the program it tells me actual setting were not saved even after I saved the settings, is any one else encountering this? I love this light but wish I understood it better.

TD2K · Aug 21, 2013

I've never tried the east to west, figured that was just too painful for me to work out. I do get the "settings were not saved" error quite often, which is a pain.

jt17 · Aug 23, 2013

My light is still getting stuck on the first pad in the morning so I tried to update the firmware and I keep getting IO error. I guess I'll have to abandon sunrise and sunset as I can't reupload the program every day to make it work properly. It's no wonder vertex is 2 years late on the release date on the cerebra. I can only imagine the errors that thing will have. Has anyone found good customer support on these in the US? The place I bought it from has never had these problems with the lights so they can not answer my questions. When people ask how I like my light I always say its a great light if you can get it to work.

Zero Nitrates · Aug 23, 2013

Mine does the same thing. The moon setting will rise and set but the sun will not. I am just waiting for a firmware fix to come out.

Alabamareef · Aug 24, 2013

jt17, Try to unplug your light, wait a few min then plug it back up. See if this resets and does what you want.

Alabamareef · Aug 24, 2013

Zero Nitrates, On your programing where you have the sunrise it solid line or a broken ling. A solid line will ramp everything up at once and a broken line will do the sunrise and set

Alabamareef · Aug 24, 2013

So let me apologize I started this thread and got very little action and have not been back to it till today. I see there are a few of us out there so let me say WELCOME and I look forward to some action in this thread. Nice Photos