Thursday 5/17 @ 7PM at

The Living Planet Aquarium

Nano aquariums have come a long way from the undersized, overcrowded, and pathetically equipped systems of years past. The “postmodern” nano aquarium is much more than a little fish tank. It’s a testbed for new concepts; a way to validate new ideas. We’ll look at some of the latest equipment for nano aquariums, and examine some of the better nano aquariums in existence today.

Related posts:

1. UTMAS member to speak at MACNA 2011
2. Jake Adams coming to speak on LED aquarium lighting
3. Representing Utah at MAX!

In addition to the frags available on the sales floor we will also be playing some games with great prizes from Frozen Food to Cherry Corals. Back by popular demand will be the Frag Pong game. New this year will be Spin the Frag Wheel where you can take a chance and possibly score a great prize. There will also be light refreshments and of course Fragtacular is a great time to meet up with your fish buddies and make new friends as well.

Now if you’ve been sitting on the fence, trying to decide weather to become a paid member of UTMAS this may be the time. Paid Members get a head start on the sales floor so you’ll be more likely to find just what you’re looking for by becoming a Paid UTMAS Member. There are many benefits to becoming a paid member of UTMAS. In addition to priority admission to Fragtacular events you also get Two for One Raffle Tickets for our legendary monthly raffles. Access to the Member Forums on the web site and more. You’ll also be doing your part to assure we can continue to bring you great events like Fragtacular and outstanding speakers like SCOTT FELLMAN who will be speaking at the May Meeting. Memberships can be purchased online or at the door.

So be sure to mark you calendar and show up at the Living Planet Aquarium on Thursday, April 19th. at 7:00pm. It’s very important to be on time to this event as these frags literally fly out the door.

Related posts:

1. FRAGTACULAR is here again!
2. FRAGTACULAR! – This Thursday
3. Announcing the 1st annual UTMAS FRAGTACULAR!

Dave Anderson

At some time or another most everyone in this hobby will need to move a tank. Either because they moved to a new house or because they bought a sweet system from a private party and want to get it to their house with as little livestock loss as possible.

This month the we will have two masters of tank moves to tell us how it’s done!

Dave Anderson and Cliff Stradling will show us all the tricks and tips they’ve used over the years and to move Cliffs TOTM beauty just two months ago. You will see before and after pics of this tank that will blow your mind.

Cliff Stradling

Come to this meeting and never worry about a tank move again!

Of course in addition to great meeting content, we will also have light snacks, coral raffle, and prize giveaways awarded for forum activity.

Thursday 3/15 @ 7PM at The Living Planet Aquarium

Meetings are FREE to everyone.

The Living Planet Aquarium

725 East 10600 South

Sandy, UT 84094-4409

Related posts:

1. September Meeting – Aquascaping by Dave Anderson
2. UTMAS meeting next Thursday 5/20!
3. Thank you WMAS for a great Reef Tour

Cole began in the saltwater hobby in 2004. Starting with a used 55 gallon tank and a home-made stand he jumped in with both feet. Originally this tank used a bio-wheel HOB filter, a few power heads, and a two bulb PC light fixture. It was only after several mistakes and reefing lessons that things changed. The bio-wheels were quickly removed and the filter was filled with valuable media such as activated carbon and phosphate/nitrate reducing pads. The next investment was a skimmer and an upgraded light system. Shortly after getting the 55g stabilized he added a 30g tank to his collection. After 6 years of having these tanks he moved and upgraded to a used 90g tank with sump/refugium.

On this tank (pictured) Cole decided to upgrade to metal halide lighting (1 400W SE Bulb) with PC supplements. Cole added a filter sock to this system and stocked the refugium with chaeto and feather calurpa. This system has been up and running for 2 ½ successful years. Cole currently doses calcium, alkalinity, magnesium, vitamin c, ions, fuel, and vibrance. His livestock includes:

Blue Hippo Tang

2 x Percula Clowns

Red Fairy Wrasse

Orbic Cardinal

Royal Gramma

Diamond Goby

Sailfin Tang

Coral Banded Shrimp

Harlequin Shrimp

Gold Tear Drop Clam

The corals consist of a variety of softies, lps and sps. Having joined UTMAS near it’s inception, Cole took advantage of the amazing raffles and fragtaculars in order to stock his tank. Cole has plans on moving again soon and taking his obsession to the next level, a 240g display tank with a 90g sump and 65g frag tank. 

Related posts:

1. Tank of the Month: July 2010
2. Tank of the Month: August 2010
3. RapidLED PnP System at the February Meeting

First impression.

I received my order on January 17th. Everything was well packaged and protected and arrived in great shape. Inside the box I found everything I had ordered and a plus. They included a single LED tester so that I could test each LED before assembly. This is a nice touch because it is possible to damage the LEDs during installation if too much heat is applied when soldering the wires to the terminals and once soldered it’s difficult to determine if the LED was DOA or damaged by the end user. The tester allows you to verify that all LEDs arrived in working order. While this isn’t so much an issue with the PNP LEDs because the wires are pre-soldered to the terminals they still included the tester. It’s little things like this that set RapidLED apart from other vendors. Overall I found everything in order and was very happy with my order.

The Build

I began the project by building a Housing to hold the electronic components. I’ll discuss a little about each component as we get to them. One of my primary design goals was to have a fixture that was true to the PnP so that it could simply be mounted above the tank plugged in and used. I didn’t want any parts located remotely from the fixture. Since the heat-sink provided by RapidLED was black anodized I decided to use a black acrylic for the housing and cover for the fixture. The housing would have to hold the LED Driver, a 1o volt dc power supply, the power cord and a potentiometer for the dimming circuit.

This might be a good time to talk about these components. 

The LED Driver is the component in the white housing shown in the picture. LED Drivers are constant current devices that supply the power to the LEDs. I used a Mean Well ELN-60-48D Dimmable Driver. This driver is an excellent driver for running between 8 and 14 LEDs at up to 1.3 Amps. It is important to know the Maximum Rated amperage for the LEDs you will be running. The LEDs I am using in this fixture have a amp rating of between 1 and 1.5A. Exceeding the maximum amperage will severely reduce the life of the LEDs so it is important to adjust the output of the driver to the amperage of the lowest rated LED. In my case 1A. More on this later. This driver also uses a reference voltage of 0 to 10 Volts to control the dimming of the LEDs

10Volt DC Power Supply My kit came with a 120 volt AC to 10 volt DC adapter (The black component on the right side of the housing). This is needed to supply the reference voltage for the Mean Well Driver. A potentiometer is used to adjust this voltage from 0 to 10V and the driver dims the LEDs accordingly.

Potentiomenter A potentiometer is used to adjust the reference voltage to the LED Driver for dimming.

Power Cord  I used an 8′ extension cord for this project.

After building the housing I mounted and installed the components. I used Silicone Rubber to mount the AC adapter and bolted the LED Driver into the place. Next I drilled the holes for the power cord and potentiometer. In order to dissipate the heat from the LEDs I will be using a fan for active cooling. It will be powered by the same AC adapter that supplies the DC voltage for dimming. In order to make the wiring cleaner I picked up a 4 terminal block from Radio Shack and mounted it to the housing. Two of the terminals are DC+ and the other two DC-. Then it was just a matter of connecting the leads from the dimming circuit and the leads to the fan to the appropriate terminals on the block. Click Here for complete wiring instructions and Here for potentiometer circuit instructions.

Heat Sink

LED’s radiate heat differently than other types of lighting. Instead of heat radiating away from the lamp, in an LED the heat radiates back through the base of the LED. This is great for reducing temperatures in the tank but makes dissipating the heat difficult. To handle the cooling of LEDs a heat sink of sufficient size is needed. Active cooling in the form of a fan attached to or blowing across the heat-sink assures that this heat doesn’t build up causing failure of the LED. I chose an oversize heat-sink both for cooling and to act as the main structure of the fixture. 

I was very pleased to find that the black anodized heat sink supplied in this kit had two mounting channels along the top of the fins. This made connecting the completed housing and fan to the heat-sink a breeze.  In this picture you can see the fan mounted to the heat-sink. I drilled holes in the tabs on the sides of the housing and mounted the housing to the heat-sink using these mounting channels as well.

Standard LED Wiring

Up to this point there has been no difference between building a standard DIY fixture and the RapidLED PnP system but now you’re going to see where the PnP components take the work and confusion out of building your own fixture.

 When mounting and wiring a standard LED array you layout your LEDs and then daisy chain them together by soldering individual wires to the correct terminal on the LED star. For those not experienced with soldering electronic components this can be an intimidating task, not to mention that excessive heat applied to the LED terminal for too long can destroy the LED.  The wiring forms a chain with the positive terminal on the first LED going to the LED Driver’s positive connection and the Negative terminal on the last LED leading to the Negative connection on the Driver.

RapidLED PNP Wiring

Contrast that to the RapidLED PnP system. A jumper wire connects to the positive and negative connections on the Driver which plugs directly into a terminal board to which up to 7 PnP LEDs can be connected. These terminal boards can also be connected by a jumper wire that plugs into the end of each board to create a string of LEDs as long as needed. any unused terminals on the board are terminated with a termination plug that completes the chain. RapidLED sells a range of jumper wires and extensions to accommodate most any layout. Now there is no confusion about which wire connects to which terminal and the end result is a much neater wiring layout. Replacing a damaged LED or changing the color of a particular LED is now as simple as unplugging it from the board and replacing it with the new product.

When building my first fixture the traditional way it took me a couple hours to solder together all the connections. Using this method I was done in less than five minutes. In my opinion this system has opened the building of DIY LED fixtures to many hobbyists who wouldn’t attempt building a fixture otherwise. Now back to the build.

LED Installation

The final step of wiring up the components involved drilling a small hole through the heat-sink for the Jumper wire that connects the LED Terminal boards to the Driver. I drilled a small hole through the heat-sink to pass this wire to the LED side to make the connection. In this picture you can see the housing that holds the driver and other components and the fan all mounted directly to the heat sink. Now it is time to start connecting the LEDs. For this fixture I selected a combination of 6 Cree Cool White XP-G and 6 Cree XP-E Royal Blue LEDs as these were the only PnP LEDs available at the time. Now they have added XP-E Blue and XT-E to the line up of blue LEDs and XP-G Neutral White. For the added spectrum these new PnP LEDs offer I would incorporate a 25% Blue, Royal Blue, Cool White, Neutral White mix of LEDs. I have been happy with the 50/50 mix of blue and whites in my fixtures especially when a separate circuit for blue and white can be used.

There are several ways to connect a LED to the heat-sink. One method is drill and tap the heat-sink then apply” Thermal Grease” to the back of the LED star and physically screw it to the heat-sink. Another method is to use a thermal epoxy and either screw or apply pressure until the epoxy sets to permanently bond the LED to the heat-sink. I used the third method which I find quick and very effective. It involves the use of a Berquist Thermal pad to connect the LEDs to the heat sink. The Berquist Thermal Pad is made of a heat conductive material with an adhesive coating on each side. The installation process is simple. Just peel the backing off the pad and apply it to the back side of the LED Star, then peel the backing off the other side of the pad and apply it to the heat-sink and you’re done. You can buy the Berquist thermal pads directly form RapidLED however if you have access to a source for the thermal material these pads are made from you can cut pads yourself. They’re not as pretty but do the same job. That’s what I did for this fixture.

Using the RapidLED PnP system the LED installation went like this. Fist connect the standoffs to the Terminal boards. Second connect the terminal boards together with the jumper wire. Now position the terminal boards where they should go on the heat-sink and make a mark where the standoffs touch the heat-sink. Next peel off the backing form the two sided tape on the standoffs and press the terminal boards into position. Once this is done connect the jumper wire from the Driver to one end of the terminal boards and plug in the PnP LEDs. Mark their location on the heat-sink and apply the Berquist Thermal Pads then position the LEDs on the heat-sink.

The final step once everything has been installed and tested is to set the Maximum Current that can be delivered to your LEDs when at full power. Since the Mean Well Driver can deliver up to 1.5A which exceeds the rating of the blue LEDs I used, to protect the fixture from burning out the LEDs you have to open the Driver and adjust the current using the set screw SVR2. Once you have opened the driver and located SVR2 you need to use a multi-meter to measure the amperage through the circuit. The easiest way to do this is to remove one of the LEDs from the circuit by unplugging it from the terminal board and plug in a  Driver Jumper cable (Order an extra cable for this from RapidLED) and connect the leads from your multi-meter to the leads on the jumper cable. Now set your multi-meter to measure DC Amps and energize the circuit. Now turn down the set screw SVR2 until the current you need is reached (in this case 1A. Full instructions for setting SVR2 are available at http://www.vinnymarini.com/pictures/rapid_docs/Using%20Your%20Dimmable%20Driver.pdf  (Note: The picture at the left shows how to check the amperage using standard wiring. The process is the same using the jumper cable with the PnP system as described above.)

The remainder of the project consisted of cutting a splash shield to protect the LEDs and building the component cover. The Black Anodized heat-sinks form RapidLED have a channel built into the bottom of the heat-sink for the splash shield.  I was able to bend a piece of acrylic to make a very clean cover for this fixture that will look great over any small tank. All in all I am very happy about the way this fixture came together and like every project it has given me some ideas for my next build.

Related posts:

1. RapidLED PnP System at the February Meeting
2. January Meeting Canceled
3. Terence’s DIY LED Build – Beta36 x 2

You’ve thought about building an LED fixture for your tank but didn’t know how to pick the right LED’s for the job, or were intimidated by the prospect of soldering all those LEDs into a circuit that would work.

RapidLED and UTMAS are taking the mystery out of building a quality DIY LED fixture. At the next meeting of UTMAS we will be highlighting the new “Plug and Play” LED system by RapidLED. This system makes building your own LED fixture a breeze and in addition well show you how to pick the correct LED’s to make your corals grow like crazy and their colors POP!

Take a look at the DIY LED fixture we built using RapidLED’s new PNP system. It’s sleek and would look great over any tank. So come join us at the Living Planet Aquarium on Thursday, February 14th, at 7:00PM to learn more about building your own LED Fixture.

As always the meeting is completely free to everyone. We’ll have some light refreshments, and don’t forget about our legendary raffle at the end of the meeting. You could take home something sweet for your tank.

UTMAS meets on the 3rd Thursday of every month at 7:00PM, at the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy, located on the NE corner of 106,000S and 700E.

We hope to see you there.

Related posts:

1. January Meeting Canceled
2. September Meeting – Aquascaping by Dave Anderson
3. RapidLED Plug N Play Kits

So what will we be giving away? Coral Frags, and Awesome Equipment. You can see samples of the actual corals and prizes on in the UTMAS Information Forum http://www.utmas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2010 . Other prizes will include and Apex Jr. AquaController, LED Lighting fixtures and more. We believe that once you experience the benefits of being part of the UTMAS community you will want to continue using the site both to gather information and help other hobbyists.

So here are the details. To be eligible for all of the daily giveaways just follow these steps.

1. Visit http://www.utmas.com/forum/ucp.php?mode=register&sid=e52ba81a925cd3f5401420a4db1938d6 and complete the new member registration. Basic membership is free of charge to everyone. After registering you will be able to participate in most of the forums and have access to all the helpful information and links on the site.

2. Post in any of the forums. Either create a new thread or post a response to one of the threads in the forum pages.

That’s it. Of course there are a few posting requirements. Come on, you didn’t expect us to give away these great prizes for simply posting a one word reply did you?

1. Posts must be at least 10 words or longer and be related to the Marine Aquarium Hobby.

2. Each post will entitle you to 1 entry in the daily drawing for prizes. The more posts the better chance of winning.

3. Some special prizes will be awarded to those who post particularly informative or helpful information as determined by the leadership team of UTMAS.

4. A prize of the week will be awarded to the person posting most often for that week.

5. A grand prize will be awarded to the person who posts most often before the February meeting and again between the February and March Meetings.

6. Prizes will be awarded at the February 16th and March 15th meetings of UTMAS at the Living Planet Aquarium. Don’t worry if you cannot attend, we will make arrangements for you to pick up your prize at your convenience after the meeting.

7. We will post more information on this promotion as new prizes become available on the UTMAS Information forum so check back frequently to see what’s new.

Related posts:

1. January Meeting Canceled
2. UTMAS meeting next Thursday 5/20!
3. UTMAS & Suzy’s Reef–Breeding Fish presentation

Related posts:

1. RapidLED PnP System at the February Meeting
2. RapidLED Plug N Play Kits
3. UTMAS Membership Drive and Forum Participation Promotion

The Annual UTMAS Marine Aquarium Swap Meet!

Thursday, December 15 @ 7PM (6:30 if you want to sell – table space is first come-first served and limited to the first 20)

Come to buy – Come to sell.  Livestock, dry-goods, equipment, you name it you can bring it down and to sell or trade with others. Clear out that fish closet! Thin out that frag tank! Pick up some great deals!

The best part of this event is it is 100% free for everyone!

But wait, there’s more!

We will also have a nice spread of the great finger foods just like last year…how about some insane meatballs or a sweet nachos bar!

But wait, there’s still more!

Bring two dozen Christmas Cookies and participate in our 2nd annual UTMAS Cookie Exchange

And yet, still more…

There will be great raffle at the end of the night.

Come join us for a great evening of buying and selling – fun and food!

Oh, and did I mention…

The best part of this event is it is 100% free for everyone!

Related posts:

1. Free Food, Free Corals, and an awesome COOKIE EXCHANGE!
2. Next Meeting: FRAGTACULAR 4/19
3. UTMAS meeting next Thursday 5/20!

Due to a scheduling conflict, we have moved the Fragtacular to the following day, Wednesday 10/26. Also, since this is close to Halloween, we will be giving a really good prize to the best adult and the best child costume – as well as runner up prizes. You don’t have to come in costume, but if you do, you may just get a nice little bonus!

Related posts:

1. FRAGTACULAR is here again!
2. Fragtacular – WOW, what a success!
3. FRAGTACULAR just a few days away!