Why do we have lighting in the saltwater aquarium? It's really for two reasons.
The first is just so it looks nice and the second is for photosynthesis.
For the corals types of Aquarian lighting.
I actually have a lot to show you guys,
but to make it look somewhat decent,
let me just set up the studio I'm going to use today and then I'll pull out all
the lights and kind of explain them. [inaudible]
I only use LEDs, so let me just show you some of the led options that I have.
These would be inexpensive Chinese Blackbox lights, you know,
a couple hundred dollars. You can't really program them, but they were fine.
Then your second kind of lights are programmable lights.
These are our reef breeders lights and these ones are awesome.
You can see they're really sleek.
A third style led I have is this Kessel 80 really simple.
You can turn it on and off the intensity here.
You can also control the color spectrum from more blue to more white second type
of aquarium lighting, high output [inaudible] lamps.
They're really great. They're really small fluorescent lamps. See that?
And so you can put reflectors all the way around them,
so light really does just point down.
This one over here is going to be your 10,000 K and this one over here is going
to be your blue actinic to really make those fluorescent colors pocket.
It's a core life high output [inaudible]. It's called the Aqua light.
This is a really affordable version,
so you have LEDs [inaudible]. Then you have metal halides,
compact fluorescents, and then hybrids,
which is a combination metal halides have been standard in the hobby for a long
time, although you don't find them as much.
They take up a lot of power and they burn really hot,
but they have a proven track record. The fourth is a power compact fluorescent.
Basically you take a fluorescent bulb and you put it into like this,
thisU shaped less power. They work fine.
I would say they're not very common because they don't put out a lot of light.
And lastly is a hybrid.
The most common hybrid fixture I see is a mixture of led lights with those [
inaudible] on the side. When it comes to styles of lights.
You really have have two styles.
You have like a long strip and then you have a puck here. Let me show you.
Here's an example of a long strip. Another example of a strip, you know what?
Let me just pull them all out.
[inaudible] [inaudible]
no discussion of light to be complete unless you talk about par.
P a R par is photosynthetic active radiation and it is light within the visible
range of 400 to 700 nanometers. For example,
every light you're going to buy from the aquarium,
it's going to have something like this.
See all those numbers there in the middle and on the edges.
Those are the par numbers and that tells you how much photosynthetic,
active radiation this light's going to put out based on the different height.
For example, on this core life [inaudible] they give you a couple diagrams here.
This is the actinic and this puts out light at about 420 and then this is the
10,000 K you can see it's a much or broad spread.
If you're just going to do a fish only tank. Honestly,
part doesn't really matter that much because your fish don't require a certain
kind of lighting to thrive. Anytime you want to think about corals,
then you need to think about how much light do I need?
Soft corals and large polyps,
Stony corals that we talked about in the previous video.
Those are on the low end of the par spectrum from like 50 to 100 if you end up
venturing into the SPS, the small polyps, Stony corals,
those have a much higher light requirement of like 250 to 350 par.
So how do you know how much par your light puts out? Well,
you can rent or purchase a par meter.
These are like 400 to $600 you can find tune and map out exactly what the par is
at different settings in different parts of your tank.
Or you can go online to different manufacturer websites or different forums and
people have done the testing for you.
The visible light spectrum is basically the wavelength of light that human eyes
can see, especially with led panels.
You're going to see a lot of different colors on that panel.
You're going to see different shades of blue, like cool blue, blue, Royal blue,
there's reds, there's greens, and then there's white.
One of the secrets is white light contains all of the colors in the spectrum,
but several blue lights are also really heavy in par and good for coral growth.
How to schedule your lights? Well,
let me just show you the few ways that I do it from a really,
really simple timer all the way up to a fancy controller.
If you're going on the most budget friendly range when it comes to timers,
you're just going to get a simple digital timer and connect it into some
inexpensive lights. You know like those Chinese black box lights.
The coral life lights are also pretty cheap. They just have a simple on and off.
So what you can use and what I use several of them,
these simple electric timers, they're really inexpensive.
You can just set them to go on and off and as an inexpensive way to automate
your lights.
The second way of automating your lights is to purchase a fixture that comes
with a controller. For example, these reef readers, you can control them here.
You don't see turn them on or off.
The final way to program your lights is to buy a smart fixture that comes with
an app like the AI primes. So if you look here, you just log in,
you can click control on the bottom,
and then you can see the schedule I've set up, which is automatic.
One of the biggest problems with scheduling is like knowing as a beginner how to
schedule and for how long to schedule.
Let's jump into the computer real quick and I'll show you a couple of places you
can go for suggestions and for help when it comes to finding your schedules.
There's a couple places I like to go. The first is reef to reef.
Just go on search and like type in your light.
So let's try AI prime lighting schedule. Click enter,
and you'll see a ton of threads pop up so you can just browse what other people
have done.
Another really good source is go to Ecotec marine.com and click on the top on
coral lab, so if you go down to spectrum and par download the link,
you can scroll down for their various lighting program.
I'd say probably the most popular one out there right now is the SPS AB plus.
You can download the schedule. You can just follow along on here.
It's been a really long proven track record of success.
[inaudible]
[inaudible] what
are my recommendations for lights?
Please remember one thing is that I focus content for beginners so I'm not going
to be choosing the most expensive light out there.
I'm trying to get beginners a good quality product that's affordable so they can
get into the hobby quickly.
My first recommendation is just a cheap Chinese black life.
There's all sorts of different brands out there.
I think this one's called Luxembourg simple on and off they will grow corals.
They'll be just fine less than a hundred dollars.
My second recommendation and the one that I use on all my tanks like right back
here is the reef breeder. Photon V [inaudible].
These are middle range price wise. They come in different sizes,
a really slick fixture and programmable it using the controller that comes with
it.
My third recommendation for a small tank are these Kessel a eighties these are
good for 10 20 gallon tanks affordable.
I think there are less than $150 but they're really high quality light.
My fourth recommendation on the fancier programmable end are the AI primes.
This is an older version. They have newer versions now.
They make this small puck one. They make larger ones as well.
These are awesome because they're a completely programmable and controllable
with your phone and my fifth and final recommendation if you don't want to go
with LEDs is the core life Aqua
[inaudible] [inaudible] are so easy to use.
You can put it on a simple timer and it's virtually automated.
What I like about these is they are foolproof.
You don't have to worry about programing every single individual led light.
Just turn it on, turn it off. Andrew
[inaudible].
We're going to talk heating and cooling. Let's start with heater.
There are glass eaters like behind Yeager.
There are titanium heaters and then there's inline heaters.
When it comes to size of heaters, really you just don't want to overpower,
so get the right size heater for the gallons of your system.
We're going to do a little test using two of the heaters.
We're going to use the Phoenix titanium heater and we're going to use the E Haim
Yeager.
The Fenix titanium is rated for tanks up to 30 gallons while the Haim Yeager is
rated for tanks up to 16 gallons,
so theoretically the titanium heater should heat twice as fast
[inaudible]
on almost all of my systems, I use some sort of controller.
A controller basically allows you to really dial in the temperature of your
tank. If you're just going to be using a regular heater,
it has an internal thermometer which will turn on and turn off at a certain
point, which usually means your water temperature is going to sway by one or two
degrees, but if you want to get really accurate,
what you can do is either by something like the Phoenix that comes with a
controller or you can buy something like this ink bird.
Another factor to consider with heaters is redundancy and what I mean is if your
heater gives out and you don't have some sort of temperature controller or alert
system,
your temperature to go from 78 to like 60 degrees overnight killing all of your
livestock. I always buy two heaters for every single one of my systems.
I set the first one to be at 78 degrees and I set the second one to be at 76
degrees and that means if this one ever gives out,
the other secondary backup will kick on once it gets to 76 degrees,
meaning it's only a two degree drop. My Joyce's for heater,
I am just a huge fan of either the [inaudible] Yeager.
I also really like the Tanium Phoenix eater for cooling or aquarium,
you have two choices. A simple fan.
They make like special fans like this one tunes the Aqua wind and all you're
trying to do is you're trying to use evaporative cooling to blow air across the
surface of your aquarium. Your other option, if a fan just isn't cutting it,
is to get a chiller. There's two types of chillers.
There's like big half horsepower, full horsepower,
quarter horsepower chillers that are these basically giant air conditioners that
sit next to your aquarium or for a smaller tank you can get something like this.
The chill solutions, Thermo electric chiller,
this is rated for up to like 30 gallons.
The footprint of this is extremely small and can do a good job if you live in a
hot environment. Finally, we're onto circulation.
Let's start out with the types of pumps that are available.
First category of bump is a power head or utility pump.
These are usually smaller pumps. They have a fixed rates.
You can use them to help pump water between five gallon buckets or you can even
use them in a small tank like this. 40 gallon provide a little bit extra flow.
You have wave makers and a wave maker really can be an AC pump or a DC pump.
It can have a fancy controller or just a simple on and off controller and a wave
maker is any type of pump that does some sort of pulse to recreate the currents
in the ocean. A return bump is used to return the water to your main display.
For example,
you could use a utility pump that we already talked about as your primary return
pump. If your tank is small enough.
Next you have an air pump and air pump just helps provide air bubbles into your
tank.
A battery powered air pump can be really handy if your power ever goes out so
you can keep your livestock alive. And lastly, you have dosing pumps.
Dosing pumps,
usually called peristaltic pumps are used to dose things like two parts solution
or calc Wasser or magnesium or other supplements into your tank.
A dosing pump has a really small rate of flow.
Basically you're adding drops into your tank at a time,
which is perfect if you're dosing small amounts of things,
whatever pump you're getting,
there are certain specifications to think about to see if it's going to be right
for the application you need it for. First of all,
pumps can either be submersible or external, some of which can be bolts.
Immersible means that it goes in the water and external pump means you just
don't put it in the water, but you put it outside of the water.
Then you have AC DC pumps.
It's the alternating current and direct current pumps in the hobby.
Most inexpensive pumps are AC pumps. They work pretty well.
They use a little bit more energy and their vibration is a little bit higher,
so you can oftentimes hear them a little bit more.
DC pumps are quieter and they're also controllable,
so you can set the percentage you want them on.
DC pumps are really often used in wave makers and they're often used in return
pumps to control the exact amount of flow you want.
Then you've got to consider a gallons per hour.
You want to have a pump that is powered enough for your system. So for example,
if I had a 10 gallon tank,
I would want to make sure that the pump was at 100 to 150 gallons per hour.
Then you got hard plumbing and soft gloaming when it comes to pumps,
pretty self explanatory. Hard plumbing is anything with PVC.
Soft plumbing is some sort of flexible tubing,
whether that's a vinyl or whether that's a silicone
[inaudible].
We're going to test seven pumps for flow and for power,
unless it doesn't make sense. For example, the air pump,
we're just going to show you how it works and the dosing pump.
We're just going to show you how it works. Let's get started.
[inaudible].
Okay. That was the Danner Supreme Oxy flow.
They don't rate these by gallons per hour just by PSI, so it's two PSI.
Number two is the [inaudible] dosing pump. Again,
flow rate doesn't really matter here nor does the power of the pump.
You're really just trying to get accuracy somewhere between one milliliter and
6,000 milliliters per hour.
[inaudible]
was the easiest to set up and to program and to calibrate from my initial use.
I definitely give this Kenmore X one dosing pump a big thumbs up.
We got five more pumps to test and all five of these we're going to test for
flow and for power. This is extremely unscientific.
Our first up is going to be the Hyde or Karelia.
Definitely the least expensive option.
This thing puts out 240 gallons per hour. Really affordable,
good for small tanks.
Number two is the CJ synchros silent 1.0 it does 251 gallons per hour.
This is a return pump. It's not meant to be a wave maker,
but we're going to attach it to show you how much flow it puts out and then
we'll do the power test
up is my personal favorite utility pump.
The cobalt MJ 1200 it puts out 295 gallons per hour,
so just a little bit more than the CJ synchros silent 1.0
next up is the reef octopus Vario two this is a DC return pump so you can
control the flow rate.
This one has a maximum output of 792 gallons per hour.
[inaudible]
last up is the max SPECT gyre.
This is the XF three 30 with the controller.
This thing is a beast.
It can put out 2,350 gallons per hour because of its long length.
It can put out a ton of flow across a wide expanse of your tank.
[inaudible]
now we're going to test the power of these pumps by sending the flow vertical.
Now I know for wave makers, it really doesn't make any sense.
Let's try it anyways and just see how much vertical strength they have.
High door Corallia the budget friendly one. Perfect for a nano tank.
I haven't got my favorite AC return pump. The CJ synchros silent line.
This is the 1.0
[inaudible].
My favorite utility pump. The MJ 1200 yeah.
[inaudible]
now we've got the reef octopus Vario.
[inaudible]
last up is the max spec Gyr
[inaudible].