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Tom's Bucket O' Mud - The End

Ady34 said:
yep.....unbelievable aquarium.
Love the video position pause to show the sunrise effect from the lighting transitions. The Sawaba Resplendens? popping out from under the ferns and cryptocoryne looked like such natural behaviour, and even more so the last angle where you could see the fish darting to the surface as if picking off insects in nature.
Thanks for the video 😎
Cheerio,
Ady.
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Cheers Ady. I think I prefer watching the tank with just the little LED on. Beats having the halide on 15 hours a day anyway. Must admit I had to drop some food in to tempt the Sawbwa out... they normally spend a couple of hours every morning sparring, then when they've figured out who's boss for the day go back to lurking under the ferns until I put food in.

Gill said:
This is so Tranquil and the BBG make a great addition to the scape.
Just had to share this Vid
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Yeah the bumblebees are awesome little fish. 2cms long but more personality than anything else in the tank. Hopefully going to try them in brackish somewhere down the line to see if I can get them breeding, seems to be very hit and miss though.
 
BigTom said:
Cheers chaps. Al, I'm definitely going to make the effort to stop off and see yours the next time I'm heading south. Whats your ETA on getting set up again?
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Definitely mate. Your welcome anytime. Not sure how filled in it will look when you do but the tank should be back a week Saturday and will be getting it all planted up that day 🙂
I've had to order a fresh 80 litre of substrate as last lot got ruined taking it down ready for repair
 
Well I've suspected for a while that my cherry shrimp population is pretty mongrel... have had a few really dark red, almost black looking females, and now today I spotted my first completely blue 'cherry'. Any shrimp experts fancy a guess as to what they've hybridised with?

bluecherry.jpg
 
BigTom said:
Well I've suspected for a while that my cherry shrimp population is pretty mongrel... have had a few really dark red, almost black looking females, and now today I spotted my first completely blue 'cherry'. Any shrimp experts fancy a guess as to what they've hybridised with?

bluecherry.jpg
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I know not. But that is Cool.
 
One or two of you may recall that some time back in June last year I bought a Kessil a150 'Amazon Sun' from the members market here, from a guy in Australia. Well, thanks to the combined incompetence of both the Australian and British postal systems (ParcelFarce, I'm looking at you), it arrived yesterday! It's been around the world at least 4 times, and in the end we had to resort to having the guy's Mum bring it back to the UK in her luggage.

Anyway, I know a few people are interested in these lights so thought I'd do a quick comparison with my trusty 70w metal halide. Both lights were suspended 50cm above the water, camera was on a tripod and in manual mode, with white balance set to 4150K which best matched my perception of the room without either tank light on. I think the results give a fairly good idea of the rendition of the two units, but make sure you're viewing them in a colour managed browser (ie, not Chrome or IE) if you want an accurate view.

Impressions so far after 2 days with it.... overall I like it. It's very small and means I'll be able to retire my somewhat ugly lighting frame and get a more minimalist fitting of some sort. The colour rendition is pretty good (I tried one of those cheap ebay floodlight LEDs once and it was ghastly, this is much better and nicely contrasty without giving harsh shadows).

The one major issue I have with it is the noise of the little 40mm fan - it's louder than my quite powerful PC and you can hear it over pretty much anything else in the room. Definitely enough to be annoying in a bedroom. I've opened the can up and it looks like its a standard PC northbridge style fan, so I've ordered a supposedly quiet replacement fan and I'm hoping it'll be pretty straightforward to swap out.

So... 70w halide with (I think) a 6000k bulb in -

halidel.jpg

And the Kessil a150 (rated as 6700K) -

kessil.jpg


So, not actually much different!

Afraid I don't have a par meter to check that, but visually it looks similarly bright to my 70w halide. Photoshop reckons the cropped underwater section of the image is about 20% brighter with the Kessil, which seems believable, although that's a pretty spurious metric by anyone's standards.

comparisonk.jpg
 
Hand delivered from Australia, no wonder it took 10 months to get here 🙂 looks like a good unit Tom does look slightly brighter even on I phone the gravel at the front looks more illuminated. Glad you got it mate if anything just so you had to post a shot of this stunning tank ( which you don't do enough) must be due a video next to show off the shimmer effect from the kessil 🙂
 
I don't have a whole lot of surface movement at the front of the tank so the shimmer isn't terribly noticeable, but it seems fairly comparable to what you get from halides... shadows generally are a bit more defined and contrasty on account of the smaller point source.
 
Just watched the vid, as I missed it! What a great vid!

As for the shrimp, that's gotta be worth £100 easily. Looking great Tom!
 
Just seen this journal and its a brilliant read, the video is fantastic truly stunning aquarium and great choice of fish, I can only hope that one day ill have a tank even half as good

Mark
 
BigTom said:
The one major issue I have with it is the noise of the little 40mm fan - it's louder than my quite powerful PC and you can hear it over pretty much anything else in the room. Definitely enough to be annoying in a bedroom. I've opened the can up and it looks like its a standard PC northbridge style fan, so I've ordered a supposedly quiet replacement fan and I'm hoping it'll be pretty straightforward to swap out.
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I tried one of these units and have to agree with the noise, will be interested in the follow up to the replacement fan Tom, the only reason I am sending it back (on Tuesday) is the noise to be honest, as I watch a lot of movies in the living room and this is too off putting. I did like the colour of the light also, they are perfect for anything up to 60cm tanks using the arm, up to 80cm you will need to hang it for good coverage, bigger than this you will need more than one, the colour rendition is good also, but the arm supplied it bulky and ugly, needs some work on that. Keep us updated with the fan swap 😉

Tank is looking great as always 🙂
 
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