Hi All,
I was hoping to get some advice. I currently have a wterbox 180 gallon tank. The tank measures 1536 x 643 x 550mm (L,W,H). I am currently in the final stages of a rebuild (getting it wet next week) and wanted to get some advice on changes to my lighting.
Previously I was running 3 Red Sea Reef LED 90s (specs here) for a mixed reef tank. This was largely fine but I had a lot of shadowing and my coverage was fairly spotty (some dark areas). This was partially driven by using arms from a former tank so the lights were mounted too far to the back. My new build is likely to be heavily SPS dominant, as such I am re evaluating my lighting options.
As I see it, I have three options.
1) Add another reef LED, switch to a pendant instead of arms and hang them properly over the tank.
2) Switch to a hybrid fixture (i'd been eyeng up the Giesemann Stellar 1200mm.
3) Just move over to a T5 only fixture
A few comments:
- I would really love not to have 5 plugs dedicated to lighting like I'd get from the hybrid approach
- The simplicity of T5 seems appealing to me
- I cannot tell from reading around if people are now more comfertable with LEDs for SPS dominant tanks
- I don't feel comfertable building my own fixture and bolting on some LED strips for extra coverage
I'd really welcome any thoughts or advice here to be honest. People seem to entrenched in their opinions and this space is moving so fast I've really struggled to trust the research I have been doing.
I was hoping to get some advice. I currently have a wterbox 180 gallon tank. The tank measures 1536 x 643 x 550mm (L,W,H). I am currently in the final stages of a rebuild (getting it wet next week) and wanted to get some advice on changes to my lighting.
Previously I was running 3 Red Sea Reef LED 90s (specs here) for a mixed reef tank. This was largely fine but I had a lot of shadowing and my coverage was fairly spotty (some dark areas). This was partially driven by using arms from a former tank so the lights were mounted too far to the back. My new build is likely to be heavily SPS dominant, as such I am re evaluating my lighting options.
As I see it, I have three options.
1) Add another reef LED, switch to a pendant instead of arms and hang them properly over the tank.
2) Switch to a hybrid fixture (i'd been eyeng up the Giesemann Stellar 1200mm.
3) Just move over to a T5 only fixture
A few comments:
- I would really love not to have 5 plugs dedicated to lighting like I'd get from the hybrid approach
- The simplicity of T5 seems appealing to me
- I cannot tell from reading around if people are now more comfertable with LEDs for SPS dominant tanks
- I don't feel comfertable building my own fixture and bolting on some LED strips for extra coverage
I'd really welcome any thoughts or advice here to be honest. People seem to entrenched in their opinions and this space is moving so fast I've really struggled to trust the research I have been doing.
