My Halide/T5 Geismann Spectra / Reef Brite strip project

five.five-six

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#1
Father’s Day project :D

My Reef Brites showed up the other day, I was playing with them last nite and my wife took interest in how great the looked on the tank. At one point she asked: how much were those? I responded with: you don’t want to know. To which she said: OK…… and went back about her business....(she is wonderful)


I love the way my Geismann spectra looks over the tank. The tank is in our foyer it’s the first thing you see when you enter our house and it needs to looks spot on, which it does. I really like that fixture but wanted LED POP. I had been using E5 LED t5 retrofits from the now defunct Euroquatics. A few weeks ago one of those lamps just about caught fire and melted the lens (photos forthcoming)

I decided in leu of just going back to MH/T5 to yank the T5 reflectors and ballasts and install T5 strip lights, which turned out to be Reef Brite. I will be installing them this weekend


First impressions:

Those lites are bright AF, I’m glad I bought the APEX dimming module. (I’ll need a PAR meter)

Overall design is nice and the finish is nice

Not real happy with the final assembly, a few of the screws look like they had been cammed over. The sheathing on the power wire wasn’t quite gripped in the strain relief, I’ll fix these things when I do my retrofit but I shouldn’t have to for that much money.

My APEX classic is out of 0-10V ports but I do have an old AquaSurf that I can derive my 0-10V APEX control from.
 

five.five-six

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#2
I couldn’t get the aqua surf to dim the lights properly, i could get them to flash, sometimes about 30% and sometimes on but nothing consistent or predictable. I think I need to buy a new VDM.
 

five.five-six

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#7
I’m pretty sure that the problem is the reef brite 0-10V apex adapter. I got on it with my VOM and it seems like ch1’s ground is in ch2’s conector and vise versa.

I’ll just set it up on/off for now. I’m at 8” off the tank now, let’s see where I end up
 

five.five-six

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#12
Almost done, I need some paint to dry before I put it all back together. One of the vent panels had some rust so I put it in the blast box, stripped it down to bare metal primed and painted it white. I only had white. I cut the melted lens into 4 each 7” sections and painted them white to conceal the wiring and ugliness at the ends, should be another 1/2 hr before they are dry enough to handle.
image.jpg
 

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