20H Lighting Help

bassman57

New member
I've been setting up a 20H. The intention is to keep some coral, mostly soft and maybe some LPS. Right now, it has a 96W PC light. It's a 20" fixture with one 50/50 bulb. I really don't think that's going to be good for much coral. I'm looking to upgrade it.

One option is a 24W x 4 T5 light. Possibly the AquaticLife 24", 4 Lamp Fixture with LED Moon lights.

The other option is some sort of LED setup. Due to cost, I'm probably looking at either DIY or PAR38.

I kind of like the simplicity of the PAR38s, but I'm not sure how many I would need, which beam angle, or which color(s). I like the idea of the T5 setup so I can have separate Dawn/Dusk and Daylight lights.

Any input would be greatly appreciated. Other ideas are always welcome!
 
I have the 24" aquaticlife 4 bulb with timer and all, its a great light, that will be more then enought light and if you change your mind later on you can still grow sps, just putting them up higher on the rock, I have the same setup a 20g high. I was thinking to upgrade to LED just to save a little money on electric bill and also on heat on the tank its not bad but you do get a little heat but if you keep your house around 77 or so you should't have a problem, and the other reason is to save money on buld changing but for my setup I would need 24 led because I keep sps and that would run me about $300 just for the light and them I would need a few more things to run them with my RKL, But since am happy with my light and they work great no problem am not in a hurry or really worried to change them any time soon. So I do recommed them.
 
DIY LED do it right the first time! I would use 12-18 leds ( I have the AquaticLife fixture too and love it but it does heat up my tank almost 3 degrees during the day. Theyre 24" model needs fans too, the moonlights aren't reliable on the fixtures, mine stopped working a month into use
 
his right about the moonlights, mines one bulb stop working after a while but got it change it quickly from aquaticlife and once again it just went out and they just send me a new one, so customer service is really good and really helpful, But if I could do it again I think I would do LED also and maybe a bigger tank
 
Right now, I'm really torn between the DIY LED and T5. I'm trying to gather info on the DIY LEDs, specifically on 20gallon High tanks. Anyone have any info on DIY LED's over a 20H?

Thanks for the input so far!
 
After reading a bunch of DIY LED stuff on this site, I think I'm going to attempt to do a DIY LED light setup, eventually. I'm now trying to figure out exactly which colors, and how many of each I need for a 20gallon high. Does anyone have any reccomendations on what which colors/how many to use?

Thanks!
 
Bump

I think I will use XP's, Royal Blue and Cool White. I see a lot of people using a 1:1 mix of RB:CW I've heard of some people doing 2:1 RB:CW. I'm not sure though, I plan on either having them dimmable with a pot, or possibly doing an Arduino LED controller.
 
to grow sps, I was told I would need at least 24 leds in total, I dont know about color, i wanted to do 1:1 because I dont really wanted that blue and plus you can dail down the white or blue to change the colors but other colors am not sure about. I was going to get a kit from reefledlights.com
 
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