A Little LED Upgrade

Even though this tank has an amazing LED setup, Moonlights, Actinics and the 14k LED lights I needed something in between to give me more options to blend in and not to mention more coloration from my corals.
After doing some research I found that the Ecoxotic Stunner Strips offer low power consumption,  smaller size, and a variety of colors.  The Ecoxotic strips are water resistance and are the perfect size to install in my hood. I ended up going with one magenta strip and one ultraviolet strip.  I figure this would give me a nice blend since the actinic leds that come with the tank are really intense.
 I was very uneasy at first about taking the hood apart to make to make some mods.  I figure I would be able to install over the glass, even with a low profile height the stunner wouldn't fit accurately and they where to close to the water.
So ended up removing the plastic cover following with the glass. My 1st idea was to place them one on the front and one on the back. To my disappointment, the stunner strips where block from the inner frame.  So the next idea was to place them in the middle of the fixture.  The stunner strips where to large that the glass cover wouldn't cover it.  I had to remove side of the black frame that holds the glass in place.  After doing some measuring and cutting the side frame for the stunner strips, I gently snap them in place and they where flush with the frame.

After the stunner strips fitted nicely on the black frame and in between the 14k leds, it was time to arrange the cords around the reflector to cover them from being exposed.  The next step I did was to get my vacuum and suck all the dust in there.  Since you can daisy chain the strips, I had to cover the expose side with a fitted plug cover that comes with the stunner strip.

I use one of the output from the stock lights and resealed with the rubber fitting from one of my old 12 JBJ DX.  So it gives it a slicker professional look.  I ended up placing the glass lid and the plastic cover guard back in place. and gave it a test drive.  Now that I have more options to play with I can set it up to different settings to give it a unique personal look.

UV Stunner Strip

UV Stunner Strip and Moonlights

Actinic and UV Stunner Strip

Actinic and Magenta Stunner Strip at 10%

Actinic and Magenta at 20%

Actinic  and Magenta at 40%

 Actinic and Magenta at 60%

 Actinic and Magenta at 80%

Actinic and Magenta at 100%

14k, Actinic, and Magenta at 80%

It has Begun

     So the next thing is where am i going to place this thing. I originally had a place on the little hall that connects to all rooms but I figure somebody can easily knock it over if not careful.  So it went back to the living room.

I actually like the stand. I wanted to build one that was going to be more sturdy and have room to play with in case I needed to add a chiller or a sump, but working my butt off at the Reef-A-Palooza i ended up with a free stand.  Thank you Ben!

     The stand is not too bad, it is made of particle board so i had to use L clamps on each corner to reinforce it. The height is a little bit more than I expected but it does give a really clean setup.

JBJ 28 Gallon Nano Cube LED Aquarium - 89 Watt Advanced

So getting the JBJ 28 gallon tank I thought I was going to be disappointed due to the fact that I owned a 12 gallon before.  I had to do several modifications in order to get the 12 gallon to where I wanted it to be.  To my surprise JBJ 28 has done a great job on this updated model.

This offers:

Tank Dimensions 18 x 22 x 22
Daylight - 25 x 3 Watt - 14k
Dawn/Dusk - 4 x 3 Watt - Actinic/466nm
Monn - 2 x 1 Watt - Nite-Vu/456nm
3 Stage Filter Mediabasket
Heater Column
Auxillary Column(for a protein skimmer)
The Ocean Pulse Duo-Wavemaker
4 3000 rpm Cooling Fans
Easier access to feeding/maintenance lid

So, as you can see i'm excited to get this started.