Opinions on new LED lightng?

barndtman84 · Sep 3, 2012

I recently swapped my 90 gallon reef for my 125 gallon predator tank so now i have a beautiful 125 gal reef tank. Now I found these great lights that look kinda like a flood light and each unit is one 20watt 14K LED and i have a total of 3 of them over my 125 gal. Now it looks great amazing shimmer and corals are responding well including my sps frags, but my question is would i still benefit from adding supplimental actinic or blue lighting and second are 3 20watt LEDS enough for a 125 gallon reef with all types of corals?

kmaintl · Sep 3, 2012

Try it and see if your corals get light hungry in a few months. I'm thinking that need at least double that amount of light... but then LED is relatively new and not sure exactly how many watts per square foot you need.

Bluewater04 · Sep 7, 2012

I would say min get double what you have.

Sage · Sep 7, 2012

i have a 155 bow front that i did a DIY LED fixture. I used 72 bridgelux 3w for a total of 216w (i still think i could use more) also i did two blues for every one white. replaced 6 of the royal blues for 420s and took 3 whites and replaced those with reds just for fun and everything is doing really good and its been about 3 months id say.

Sage · Sep 7, 2012

and the whites are 10000k sorry lol

mcarroll · Sep 7, 2012

barndtman84 said:
I recently swapped my 90 gallon reef for my 125 gallon predator tank so now i have a beautiful 125 gal reef tank. Now I found these great lights that look kinda like a flood light and each unit is one 20watt 14K LED and i have a total of 3 of them over my 125 gal. Now it looks great amazing shimmer and corals are responding well including my sps frags, but my question is would i still benefit from adding supplimental actinic or blue lighting and second are 3 20watt LEDS enough for a 125 gallon reef with all types of corals?

ENOUGH LIGHT
You're not running a really deep tank, so you may have decent luck with only 20 watt lamps - just don't have high-light expectations at the level of the sandbed or at the perimeters. Good places for your medium and lower-light corals though!

I'm running a similar number of LED-watts over a 50 gallon tank for SPS, so you may find yourself wanting to go as much as double the current lighting you have. This all depends a lot on your rock structure and specific coral placement - see how things progress with the corals though.

ADDING COLOR
10K vs 20K is a personal taste issue as much as anything (faster growth vs more color...but the corals don't care much either way), but if you like blue like 20K bulbs, for $10-$15 you can get 20K LED chips to replace the 10K chips in the lights you already have. I'd probably go this route if it was my tank. ac-rc sells a read-to-go 20K version of your lights for $51.

Try this: 20w 20000k led | eBay

Optionally you could lay 1-2 460nm Blue floods right next to each of the 10K's you have already. Looks like around $50 is the going rate. Of course there are a lot of other options for adding blue. This option has the benefit of matching your existing lights' lighting-pattern very closely for better color-mixing.
Like these: 20w blue led flood | eBay

PICTURES
Can you post some pictures of the tank with the lights on? I'd love to see how these lights look - considered them myself before going with GU10's instead.

Good luck!

-Matt

Reef Breeders · Sep 7, 2012

In bridgelux terms, you can keep some softies with that. I f you want sps, or softies, you need at least 100-150 watts of bridgelux, or about 80-100watts of crees per 24" of tank.

Zack · Sep 7, 2012

i have the new ecoxotic panorama pro fixtures and I dont think you need the same amount of wattage as you would with halides or T5's. I have less watts now with my led's than i did with my old T5 setup. But they are definitley WAY brighter and the corals are growing at an incredible rate compared to my higher watt t5's. The SPS, LPS, and zoas all love the leds. The actinic leds are coloring up my sps wonderfully.

Sage · Sep 7, 2012

^^ bump! :bounce:

SPSjunky · Sep 7, 2012

I have 3 value fixtures I picked up from reefbreeders and I couldnt be happier. SUPER bright,awsome color, and you cant touch anything close to the price. The customer service is the best i have ever seen in the hobby!

barndtman84 · Sep 16, 2012

Hey guys thanks for the input and I will take some pics tomorrow. I also agree that it seems 3x 20watt LEDS is not enough power but it's been about 3 weeks now with the 3 20watt 14k's and I must say for what they give off wattage they are insanely bright and has great shimmer and my blasto is on the sand and it's doing fine. But I think I am going to try And add some DIY LED strips of both blue for supplementation and maybe 2 12k-14k whites as there is a very minimal but noticeable gap in between the lights. But I have a few diff sps frags which are at the top of tankand under the led but they are already acclimated polyps fully extended too.

barndtman84 · Sep 16, 2012

Also these corals were previously under 2 120watt blue moon LED fixtures at 14k so I think I could get away with what I have but I want it to be appealing to the eye but also have as wide a spectrum as possible.

Also I have a couple 55 gallon long tanks with stands and well everything u need to run it and I have tons of filters and random equipment, and I build nice custom refugiums wih sumps but I need to get rid of this stuff ASAP and for cheap an I also have a bunch of predator fish I must sell I have lionfish, dogface puffer, fox face, 6" panther grouper, dragon wrasse, squirrelfish, yellow and a Sailfin tangs, 2 snowflake eels and one zebra, a huge 4" domino damnsel and reg one, rectangle trigger and they all get along and are healthy. Pm me if u are interested.