Thanks for posting in the FTS thread. Your build should see some new action. There is nothing I can say that hasnt already been said, stunning. Congrats.
Thanks Micheal. That's a super fun thread, so many amazing tanks in there already!
BTW, I am thinking of experimenting with some of these. Thoughts?
http://www.cheaplights.com/cart/page15.html
I see no reason they wouldn't work for adding some color. With the LED spots I use, they really just add some color, not enough juice to effect growth or anything, just highlighting. If that's your expectation you should be good.
Really fun for me to have just stumbled upon this build thread; I'm considering "poor man's Japanese spotlighting" (e.g., 5 x 3w Par38 LED spots) for a new tank myself. This is a spectacular tank, with obvious attention to detail from start to finish. A question on the lighting: what do you feel you are able to accomplish through spotlights that you would not have been able to have achieved with more conventional MH options? (This tank seems very brightly lit everywhere, and doesn't seem to have the "looking through shadow into bright light" effect that I have seen with some other spotlit tanks.)
The aesthetic of the entire tank had a lot to do with my choice of going with the spots versus traditional lighting. While I would agree that it appears the entire tank is under a lot of light, even when I have everything running there are still some more shaded areas. My acans for instance are never under any direct heavy light (just a little MX LED spotlight) -- Plus, you can't get bulbs in the 40-50K spectrum here, and the deep blues I'm running now are in that range.
I think those new LED spots that are being done by EVILC over at nanocustoms are going to start showing up a lot of places. I'm already seeing them on more and more tanks. I'm hopeful they will have the juice to really grow out nice tanks and we see more and more people using them.
As mentioned above, the LED spots I use (MX spotlights) are not intended to provide anything more than color, they don't pack enough punch to be meaningful to growth, so from that end I don't have a lot of experience. I will say I do like the focus-ability of the MH spots I have and I think with using a series of the LED's you should get the same benefits.
Thank you so much, a tremendous compliment.