led height

[gaby_scan]

hello all, i'm finally putting together my tank and now i'm in the process of wall mounting my 2 chinese 165w lights lol. i tried searching but couldn't find an answer, what height should i put the lights above water??? thanks

 

[garygonzales]

got mine about 7 -8 inches about water...i believe thats about good average height...

 

[thegrun]

There is no right answer, but somewhere in the 10" range would be a good starting point.

 

[gaby_scan]

thanks, i was thinking of 10'' actually, i think 12'' is a bit high

 

[nereefpat]

what is the size of the tank?

You can potentially get better spread/coverage and less "disco" by hanging them high, and cranking the power up.

 

[mattgumaer]

In general, higher is better. I would hang them as high as you find tolerable. If you want to be more scientific about it, try to borrow a par meter and see what kind of spread/hot spots you're getting. You'd be amazed at the different par levels you may find when the light level appears relatively consistent by eye.

As others have suggested, you'll also get improved color blending hanging the lights higher.

Matt

 

[Tripod1404]

As high as possible. Few people run or need to run their LEDs above ~50%. So you can hang them up and increase the power.

 

[billdogg]

I use a pair of AI Sol Blues over my 120DT stocked with mostly SPS and a few LPS. They are set to 45W/65B/65RB and hang 14" above the water. I can easily grow sticks (acropora sp) on the sand

 

[gaby_scan]

what is the size of the tank?

You can potentially get better spread/coverage and less "disco" by hanging them high, and cranking the power up.

it is a 75 gallon tank

 

[newbie2014]

Like others had suggested, for those black boxes, hang’em high......

Better color blending and spread. I also took the optics off on mine.

 

[Diana A]

Is there any disadvantages of hanging the light too low besides light spread?

 

[Uncle99]

The closer to water, the closer to moisture, if not covered, splashes, in my case I get a bit of "popping" at certain random flows and evaporation is never good for electronics.
I keep 10 inches min to allow for air to move around my LEDs.
This way lenses stay clean and the box dry.
Years ago when I had them closer, like 6 inches, the metals clearly rusted faster.

 

[dmsprague]

I'm running six of the black box LED lights 3 over each tank a 180 gallon and a 150 gallon. Been up over a year now and I have them hanging so I just have enough room to open up the glass lids to feed etc. The 180 is fowlr with a lot of bubble tip nems and a long tentacle nem. I run them at 100 % and the nems seem to thrive. The 150 is deeper but I run them the same way. It has some lps and softies along with about 20 nems. Everything seems to do well all they way to trachy on the sand bed. I did remove the clear reflectors from all of the LEDs and that really seemed to help get better light distribution.

hello all, i'm finally putting together my tank and now i'm in the process of wall mounting my 2 chinese 165w lights lol. i tried searching but couldn't find an answer, what height should i put the lights above water??? thanks

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

 

[gaby_scan]

I finish installing them and decided to go with 10" above water, came out really nice, just have to see how they work with the livestock lol