Review of Radion Diffusers on shallow sps reef

[tenurepro]

Hi All. I've been running gen 3 radion xr15s (3 of them) on my sps dominate Redsea reefer 250. The tank is somewhat shallow and most of the sps are 6 to 12" below the water line. I started with the standard 80 deg lenses on the lights, but that caused a major hotspot of par under the led puck. It was impossible to get even lighting on my top shelf with the 80 deg lenses; ps. The hotspot issue gets worst the higher you go up the tank.

So I swapped out the 80 deg lenses for the 120 deg wide angle lenses a year ago, and that helped spread out the light a bit, but at the expense of overall par levels. I was running the radions at 70% max intensity at the 18.5k spectrum and was getting Par between 200 to 300 over my sps.

Then I saw the new xr15 diffusers and couldn't resist giving them a shot.

The diffusers obviously impose a reduction in par but the key question is: will the 80 deg lenses + diffuser outperform the 120 deg lenses ?

The short answer is, hell ya!
At the same max intensity (70%), I get substantially more par, better shimmer and about the same spread with 80 deg + diffuser vs 120 deg without diffusers!

Full review here: (a video tells a thousand words [emoji4]

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[tenurepro]

Hi All. I got several requests for a full comparison of the diffuser on both the 80 and 120 Deg lenses.

In summary
In terms of par, we get
80>80+D>120>120+D (where d= diffuser)
In terms of Best spread of light, we get
120+D>120>80+D>80

For me the best compromise of par and spread came with the 80 deg lens plus diffuser

Here is the vid
https://youtu.be/G9Tn2n7zzlA



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