Red Sea Max Nano - to freshwater

[fr499y]

Have you found anything the A80 wont grow @fr499y - i've often been tempted to put 2 on my 4ft just to get that kessil shimmer without the mega costs.

I found the Asta F20 does a better job, but I like to control my lights a bit more

[fr499y]

Thanks prefer the price of the A80. The Red Sea does have separate channels for white and blue so can turn that off completely if needed but the white is only 10w max. Also noticed a80 in Flora and sun, is it the sun I would need.

Struggling to figure out how I would do a internal foam filter, as you can see on the photo the pump remains on the right (Jecod 1200) there are two internal glass sections creating a weir. I plan on keeping the mesh sock for mechanical filtration

The white is also 10k white, which contains too much blue for freshwater 6500k - 9500k is the range you really want.

You can get media baskets that slot in where the skimmer should be, giving you all the media space you could want Or make one with egg crate/darice mesh

[Lee_k]

Have you found anything the A80 wont grow @fr499y - i've often been tempted to put 2 on my 4ft just to get that kessil shimmer without the mega costs.

I found the Asta F20 does a better job, but I like to control my lights a bit more

Does the Asta give you the shimmer the kessils do tho?

[fr499y]

Hell yes! On par with the bigger kessil.

[thepominlaw]

Been out and about today looking at LFS, narrowed my filtration options for this tank to the Seachem Tidal 55 (or 35 HOB) or the Fluval 107 canister. Lighting I’m looking at going for the fluval plant 22w as opposed to the 15w A80.

Just waiting for the citric acid to arrive to remove some coralline (got rid of loads on equipment yesterday with D-D easyclean.

What do you think of Lightning or filtration options?

[thepominlaw]

Is this the Asta F20? Seems very cheap I could buy nearly 4 or these for the cost of the Fluval plant

[LookoutTrout]

The Fluvial plant is probably a better design but they will all use standard LEDs. Fluvial make a big deal of 120 degree beam angles, that sounds ok if you have a shallow tank but in some most of the light will be hitting the sides before it reaches any plants.
Where there might be a difference is in quoted power, I found on my cheaper ones it matched the draw at the mains socket, plenty of that is lost in the transformer and doesn't make it to the LEDs.

[thepominlaw]

Water will be 17” deep in this tank suppose once you factor in substrate 15” so maybe the fluval will be the better option

Lfs is fluval dealer, quite like the look of the fluval shrimp/plant substrate

[fr499y]

Is this the Asta F20? Seems very cheap I could buy nearly 4 or these for the cost of the Fluval plant

Yup, they don’t come with the controller though for freshwater, and it’s a single 6500k cob LED that produces brilliant results

[thepominlaw]

Okay so bit of an update, tank up and running with a new fluval plant 22w light, much brighter than the white channel on the Red Sea Led 50. Warmer light too less clinical think it’s 6500k. Bought a Seachem Tidal filter but unfortunately the rear sump of the max Nano runs about 2” lower that display so tidal pump was unable to operate. As I already had a rear sump I have used egg crate to create a filter. Water flows through 200 micron sock before passing through coarse sponge finally passing over 1 litre of Maxspect bio balls before exiting via the pump. Seems okay so far still have the media shelf built into the tank for purigen or carbon if needed. Thanks to Fr499y for the idea. Was reluctant to run a canister filter. If needed may run internal but I’m hoping not for 65 litre volume. One expensive ish mistake bought 8kg bag of fluval stratum, what horrible messy stuff didn’t like the fact if breaks down to “mud” was thinking it was hard pellets, took it out again trying to decide to throw it or not.