Do I buy Radions or keep DIY?

[Ukreeferguy2020]

I have built some LEDs for my reef Tank however an opportunity to buy 2x Radion XR30W Gen 3s have arose. I wanted advice for if I NEED them.

My current LED that I made can dim up and down with the sun and is pretty much full spectrum equal to the radions in ratio. (More leds as I have used cheaper 3w ones.)

I have just added lenses to my leds however there are too narrow so the following PAR readings (from a Seneye) are with narrow lenses so I expect them to drop a little when I get slightly wider ones.

Tank is 24" deep and distances below are distance from LEDs.

Depth - without lenses - with lenses
8" - 250 - 1500
12" - 210 - 885
18" - 140 - 533
22" - 125 - 447
27" - 90 - 340

I looked at a radion calculator and it 'appears' that they are not as high as this at these depths.

Can anyone confirm and give me advice whether it's worth paying a lot of money for the radions compared to my own (which cost me £120 to make)

Thanks.

Ps these are mine.

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[OceansMotion]

Personally id recommend getting the radions. They offer tons of programming, cloud cover and you can program them to a controller or sync them up to the pumps. I may. Be biased but i have noticed tons more growth over the t5s i used to have. Also for most corals id recondmend a par around 200-300 range. Any higher can actually slow down the growth rate. My radions are at 35 percent (yes you can set it exactly at what percent you want) and i was growing sps quickly on the bottom of a 65gallon DSA tank.
For the chioces and custom ability id go for it.

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[Ukreeferguy2020]

Do I buy Radions or keep DIY?

Thanks for your reply. The thing is I build the lights as I am programming an Arduino controller and everything is going to be displayed on a Samsung tablet. All the plugs, the wave makers, lights modes, auto feeding is all doing to be run from it.

If I get the radions however this will not be able to run on MY controller. Do you think the PAR output on mine are ok? Keep in mind I can programme my lights to do what I want through the Arduino. I've already written a lightening storm (which i know is more for display purposes) but that has a cloud over/fade seuquence before it starts )

If I kept mine, I was thinking of putting two 5' T5 tubes on it too for the 'full sun' setting.

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[OceansMotion]

Id still get the radions just because i know they grow coral really well. And can do anything you want with them. I have the gen 2s and they work really well. I can only imagine what the newer ones are like.

I would turn down your intensity but it does seem like yours would work really well.

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[Ukreeferguy2020]

Oh it's not at that. I just ramped it up to 90% to test max par.


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[Ukreeferguy2020]

Anyone else? Is the kind of PAR my lights are outputting ok?


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[inthedeep2]

your par with lenses will grow anything. also be careful not to fry your corals. if your happy with your diy and see growth then theres your answer.
me personally cant shell out the money for radions, theres so many other options, and opinions out there.
can we see a tank shot with your lights on how you like.

 

[Ukreeferguy2020]

Well I did want to get the radions as some come up cheap (well, cheap for radions) and part of me wanted them as I know they're the best. However I surprised myself with how bright they are with lenses.

I will loose a bit as I think the ones I tried were 60 degree and did loose a bit on the edges of the tank, going to go with 80s which should be better all round.

I have taken the lenses off now and haven't had them on till I tested them earlier and all did seem fine. Things growing and such. However par at the bottom was less than 100 so thought I'd better put the lenses on.


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[McPuff]

Do the Radions have a warranty remaining?

You built the DIY so you know how to fix anything that may go wrong. Are they growing corals currently? Do you like the look? We already know you like the controllability you've created.

I'd keep your DIY, unless there's something you don't like about them.

I would, however, remove the glass tops as you're losing PAR. :0)

 

[Ukreeferguy2020]

Hi McPuff, yes corals are doing well, apart from an sps frag I bought as a sort of test, but then I didn't have the lenses on then so par was at an al time low. The look is good to be honest, I made 7 different channels covering most of the individual colours. Might have a tinker though as put too many reds in.


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