Upcoming Lighting Retrofit!

Ideally, reef tanks are fun and low-maintenance. Your little ecosystem thrives symbiotically and all you have to do is sit back and grin stupidly while struggling against the urge to overfeed. It is, of course, not so simple as all that. You must closely monitor your levels of salinity, nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, pH, and so on. If you fail to do that, your critters become pissed off and/or dead (more on that later). And among much else, you must have really awesome lighting. Coral reefs exist on the equator in shallow water, where it is very, very sunny. That's what reef inhabitants prefer. Unfortunately, the stock Marineland Eclipse bulb (a 13-watt compact fluorescent POS) doesn't cut the mustard. Hence my upcoming super-sweet modular LED retrofit project!!! I bought two of these babies:

This is the Ecoxotic Panorama LED Module, and it is super awesome!!! Two of these will deliver 26 watts of LED light, which is an enormous amount for a 12-gallon tank. My LFS says "the more light the better." And the best thing about LEDs is that they radiate very little heat. The standard reef aquarium lights (metal halide or T5) threaten to boil your fish unless you install a fan to chill your aquarium hood, a chiller to chill your water, and a robust investment portfolio to pay your electric bill. Even my little 13W compact fluorescent puts off enough heat to be a serviceable cat-warmer (see pic to the right). Not so with the LED. Scout will just have to curl up on my laptop like she used to (with her paw on the Delete key if an important document is open).

The dude at my LFS regards LEDs as new-fangled, unproven technology. I guess I'm the guinea pig. A guinea pig with an electric drill. Stay tuned. They're on backorder.