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TMC Grobeam 1500 Ultima Questions

livewire

Member
Joined
1 Dec 2012
Messages
124
Location
Bristol UK
Hello everyone,

I am looking at possibly purchasing two of these tiles for my planted tank, I am injecting Co2.
My questions are;

My tank is 200L (100 x 40 x 55cm) so is reasonably deep, between the hood and water surface there is around 8 cms and I would like to fit the tiles inside the hood if possible to keep everything looking neat and tidy. Will this mean the tiles will be to close to the surface of the water? (I guess 2-4cm above)

Also there are two types of the TMC 1500 Ultima tiles, one Natural Daylight and Colour Plus. The colour plus claims to be designed for use in planted tanks but is this true?

Many thanks
Dan
 
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This may help! but I dont realy understand it but the colour plus looks like it puts out more light. But I am more than likley wrong!
 
Yes, you are wrong. The data on the charts are irrelevant. Get whichever model is the least expensive. The one on the top will look more green/yellow. The one represented by the bottom chart will look slightly bluer. Your plants will not care. Whichever light you get, make sure they come with dimming controls because that is 1000X more important than what color they are.

Cheers,
 
Yeah Mike, but as I mentioned, if the unit has a dimmer then this is no problem. If it doesn't have a dimmer then yeah you will have major troubles.

Cheers,
 
The real downside to the TMC tiles (and maybe other manufacturers?) is that all of the mounting kit is often seperate. I concede that this gives you some great flexibility on buying only what you need, but it's one of those hidden costs.

Check out George's current scape in the featured journals section. He's using two of the 1500ND tiles I believe.
 
Yes, you are wrong. The data on the charts are irrelevant. Get whichever model is the least expensive. The one on the top will look more green/yellow. The one represented by the bottom chart will look slightly bluer. Your plants will not care. Whichever light you get, make sure they come with dimming controls because that is 1000X more important than what color they are.

Cheers,

Thanks for the info, the Colour Plus tiles are slightly more expensive but I would prefer the light to look slightly bluer, so the dimmer unit is a must so that will need to be factored in to the cost.

So would the tiles be fine if they are only a couple of CM's from the surface? I guess it would just be a case of dimming the tiles to the correct level.

The real downside to the TMC tiles (and maybe other manufacturers?) is that all of the mounting kit is often seperate. I concede that this gives you some great flexibility on buying only what you need, but it's one of those hidden costs.

Check out George's current scape in the featured journals section. He's using two of the 1500ND tiles I believe.

Hello, If I end up with 2 of these I would like to make a new plastic hood and cut the hood so that the heat sinks are exposed above the hood, (same thing that was done by a member here with a corner tank) I will check out Georges journal.

Dimmer is £185 or just raise them up (free) if tank open top. Details in 259 journal.

The twin dimmer units can be had from Ebay for arund £75, raising the hood is not an option as it wont look right with my tank.
 
Might need to double check that. I posted that link for Rebus' benefit, but looking at it you might need that one. It seems the Aquarays and Aquabeams differ judging by the description of that one at AE. I guess the tiles pull more juice :)
 
The OP wants to run two tiles with a facility for dimming, for that he will either need 2x two channel controllers or 1x eight channel controller.
the two channel will run 1 tile or 2 strips, the eight channel will run 8 strips or 4 tiles or any combination of.
 
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