W1ngz
Failed Padawan
I'm looking for some input on a refugium light. It's time to upgrade my Home Depot grow LED to something more application specific for my chaeto. It grows, but not terribly fast.
There's tons of threads that discuss refugium lighting, but none of them seem to properly consider the size of the refugium, and almost every thread ends up with an H380 user barging in and touting their effectiveness, without regard to the use case. I'm sure everyone loves their 380s, but the use case matters more than your love for your gear.
I have a fijicube Advanced 30 sump, with a refugium that is 10" by 6" with 9" of water, so a 380 is complete overkill.
For the space I have, I think the H160 is also way too much and I'll have to try hard to contain the light spill so the algae grows in the fuge and not the adjoining sump sections. I'm not quite ready to write it off though, as it's easily adjustable, but why pay for the 40w light if I'm just going to dial it back to levels that the H80 does just as well?
Enter the H80, with it's 15w of macroalgae specific reds and blues. And a Kessil price tag. I definitely believe you get what you pay for, so if the research that Kessil puts into their lights and spectrums makes it the best choice, I'm all for it but I don't want to pay for what I don't need.
Then there's the IM ChaetoMax with a slim profile that seems perfectly designed for the space and size I have, but feels like it might be a little on the underpowered size at 9w. Still an improvement since it focuses the available wattage into the right spectrums instead of the full spectrum grow light I have. It's also about 1/3 the price of the H80.
So which one? Keep the same power usage as my grow LED and just go for the spectrum with the chaeto-max? Or upgrade both the spectrum and the wattage with an H80? Would I just be burning dollar bills with the H160?
There's tons of threads that discuss refugium lighting, but none of them seem to properly consider the size of the refugium, and almost every thread ends up with an H380 user barging in and touting their effectiveness, without regard to the use case. I'm sure everyone loves their 380s, but the use case matters more than your love for your gear.
I have a fijicube Advanced 30 sump, with a refugium that is 10" by 6" with 9" of water, so a 380 is complete overkill.
For the space I have, I think the H160 is also way too much and I'll have to try hard to contain the light spill so the algae grows in the fuge and not the adjoining sump sections. I'm not quite ready to write it off though, as it's easily adjustable, but why pay for the 40w light if I'm just going to dial it back to levels that the H80 does just as well?
Enter the H80, with it's 15w of macroalgae specific reds and blues. And a Kessil price tag. I definitely believe you get what you pay for, so if the research that Kessil puts into their lights and spectrums makes it the best choice, I'm all for it but I don't want to pay for what I don't need.
Then there's the IM ChaetoMax with a slim profile that seems perfectly designed for the space and size I have, but feels like it might be a little on the underpowered size at 9w. Still an improvement since it focuses the available wattage into the right spectrums instead of the full spectrum grow light I have. It's also about 1/3 the price of the H80.
So which one? Keep the same power usage as my grow LED and just go for the spectrum with the chaeto-max? Or upgrade both the spectrum and the wattage with an H80? Would I just be burning dollar bills with the H160?
