75 gallon replacing MH for LED?

[is_that_a_fish]

Hello all,

I have not been in the hobby for a while, upwards of 6 years. When I left, LED's were still experimental and expensive, and all of my tanks had metal halide because of the growth, but also because of the amazing shimmer effect it had.

Getting back into the hobby, I set up a 75 gallon RR with a 10 gallon sump that i will be upgrading to a 20l in the next week.

I have a 1" sandbed, and about 85lbs of LR. current livestock includes a kole tang, and two false percs, and a nice frogspawn frag.

I intend on keeping the fish list short, I know I will add a diamond goby, but probably stop at that.

as far as corals, softies and LPS, but the lps list will be short, probably being kept at the frogspawn and maybe adding a hammer, but thats about it as far as i know. most softies: mushrooms, kenya trees, xenia, zoas, gsp and a leather.

I used to crowd my tanks with frags, however, with this one, I plan on growing my frags to colonies.

My question lies here: without much thinking, i snagged a good deal on 2x250 watt metal halides, 14k phoenix blubs. I love the color, however, the heat is insane. the tank stays a stable temp, but with our new houses' open floor plan, the entire living/dining/kitchen area gets really hot, running up our AC bill almost double. :headwally:

i've been looking at how cheap LEDs have gotten, with so much adjustablity as well. I have seen good reviews on the chinese LED's on ebay, specifically from Mars Aqua. customer service is said to be good, as well as a 1 year warranty.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2PCS-Dimmab...8771177?pt=US_Hydroponics&hash=item5658e7c2e9

I believe this would be good for my needs, however, this orbit also caught my attention

http://www.amazon.com/Current-USA-M...id=1438970079&sr=8-2&keywords=current+usa+led

My tank is an oceanic, so it has a huge glass center brace, so i think i would go with two 18 inch units as opposed to one 48 inch unit. my rocks are two pillars, so maybe the long one would work as well as there is only one rock in the center about half way up the tank.


What are your suggestions? Saving money on power from the MH as well as my AC would do me wonders. I understand there are more high end models, but until i finish college (1 year), im on a budget. Im going for will these lights support the corals i want, as opposed to if they will last five years. i can replace them once i get a big boy job and money isnt so tight :beer:

Thanks for your opinions!

 

[Ron Reefman]

I've never used the MarsAqua, but they look like most of the other Chinese fixtures. But I do have OceanRevive, ReefBreeders and ReefRadiance fixtures that all work very well and they have been in the business longer. Two of the three are sponsors here, so they can easily answer your questions and deal with any issues. OceanRevive just sent me new circuit boards with leds and lenses because my board died (bad led... not burned out, but caused a serious dimming of all the blue leds).

As for the Current fixture. It has all the bells and whistles, but it also has leds that are about 1/10th the power (0.3 watts) of everybody else's 3.0 watt leds. Don't waste your money. I've done PAR meter tests for club members who bought these and they are weak.

One last point. I had 4 tanks with 3 being MH & t5 and 1 was just t5. I switched all 4 tanks to leds and I'd never go back. The control of color is great. I enjoy the long sunrise, midday and sunset effect. And after a couple of months of acclimation my corals are doing just as well as when they had MH. And between my electric bill and the end of buying new bulbs, all 6 fixtures had paid for themselves in under 2 years. And I'm pretty conservative with how often I replaced bulbs.

 

[is_that_a_fish]

ah, i overlooked the wattage as for the current fixtures, I guess i just thought that everyone was running their LEDs at 50-80%, so it'd just be better running a lower wattage light.

Thanks for the info. I will probably be ordering them in a week or so.

 

[VWD]

I been using reefbreeders and like them and for what you will be keeping will be more then enough and customer service is good from everything I have read and have not had any issues.

 

[nuvuku]

I have 2 evergrow d120's and I have have flourishing colonies of acro's. Self explainitory there. Ive never used a current led fixture but I have always stayed away because of the bad reviews.