After three years of running LEDs I have decided to finally go back to halides.
Here is what I have found.
On my old 90g corner 2 hydras worked beautifully. The 90g corner had a small footprint and these lights produced very little shadowing. I was thrilled:
http://imgur.com/a/9n4B5
In these pics EVERY SPS you see (not a lot) started smaller than one inch, and grew wonderfully.
I then updated to my 125 standard and purchased a hydra 52 for the middle, and the two older hydras handled the sides. Three lights total. All of my SPS died, now to be fair at the time my alk was acting insane and things were not very stable due to the move. So once I had things stable after the move I tried with more SPS and LPS. I have not been able to keep an SPS coral alive for more than 2 months using these LEDs. I attribute this 100% due to coverage and shadowing after I got water stable. At this point my water has been stable for well over 5 - 6 months, and I can't keep them from slowly but surely dying from the top down. I have made slow changes, fast changes ... all of the things, and I just can't keep SPS alive.
I have decided to go the Cebu sun route with halides and T5s as I do not want to purchase 2-3 more 500$ LEDs and then go through the trouble of getting the spectrum correct again. Such a painful way to go about this.
So what I will say is, unless you have a small tank or the money to really get good coverage out of these LEDs... Then do not bother. If you can afford the coverage and have the patience to make them work ... then they will work well! I mean no hate toward LEDs, I loved these when the tank was smaller and allowed them to function at their max.. I will keep them for my next build which may be a 60g cube for just SPS to try this again.
My water husbandry has always been on point up until this 125, it has given me a lot of problems. After a year and a half I am ready to try something new for lighting if only as a last resort. I wound up going with M58 ballasts due to impatience, and USHIO 14k Bulbs with 2 Super blue ATI, 1 Coral Plus, and 1 Super purple - I hope that makes the tank look "ok" - I plan to upgrade to M80s and Radiums when I can find 3 M80 ballasts at the same time.
I feel bad for leaving team LED - and if it was not for the cost of 3 more Hydras (and upgrading my existing to 52) I would stick with them. Another interesting observation... SPS placed under the 52 would die within weeks. . When placed under the standard Hydras they would grow out some, but eventually shadow themselves at the base ... resulting in death. The standard Hydra so far has given "better" results than the 52, for both SPS and LPS.
Here are some pics of the tank now, apologies as it looks like death.
http://imgur.com/RwF1ufZ
http://imgur.com/LAkpEKh
http://imgur.com/XJWVprc
I tried tilting the lights around, placing them higher, lower, all of it. Shadowing all over, and eventually the SPS would simply starve at points and die out relatively quickly.
Params:
Alk: 146 = 8.1 DKH
P04: 0.0 - (this goes from 0 to .04)
PH: 8.0
Cal: 440
Nitrate: 2-5
Mag: 1400
We'll see what happens. Lights get here Thursday.
