Will LED's Work?

[raidedxelite]

I have a set of LED for my 20g long and wanted to start adding Corals. Starting with Zoas, but I cant find much in terms of water params required?

Also my 20g long is not very deep so will LED's work when attempting to grow corals? I have read mixed reviews regadring LED's and coral growth?

 

[Mael]

water params you can find more info on in the general sections of this forum, like the newbie forum and reef chemistry forum depending on how much info you want. Hard not to go into detail on that subject, but as long as your params are in the acceptable guidlines you should be fine there.

For lighting, I run my LED's about 6" above the water, some zoas are only a few inches below the water but most are 12-18" down from surface, right now I run blues at 80% and the whites I am slowly raising but they are at about 30-40% right now. The Z's and P's seem to love it. Oddly enough the fastest growing and best health frag I have are the pink PE's I have at the top with my SPS, those things are spreading pretty well.

 

[terrypercula]

LED's can work but there's so many variables.

 

[raidedxelite]

what do you mean by variables? the tank? water params? lighting? type of coral?

 

[Mael]

those are some of them. Biggest mistake is when going from T5 to LED you can run into trouble if you start the LEDs are 100% power. I started my blues at 60% and whites at 10-15 and have ramped up over time to 80/50 as of last night. Also any sensitive coral I start in a shaded overhang area and slowly move out as it acclimates.

There are way too many success stories with LED's to ignore it now, but you need to understand the unit your buying, the light intensity it puts out(PAR), and color spectrum to mention a few things. Im actually about to switch from T5 to LED on the prop tank as well, then all my lighting will be LED and the coral in the DT has loved it for the last 6 months.

 

[Webmanny]

I agree with Mael here. I too use a LEDs on my tank and mine are DIY. Pick below. One thing you need to make sure of is to use ones that can be dimmed. If you don't have any corals right now, you are good to add the LEDs and then as you add corals, dim the LEDs down and slowly back up over the next few days.

I can tell you that I absolutely love them and I am even growing SPS corals in my tank with great success. Good luck!

My LED setup.:

My Tank:

 

[terrypercula]

what do you mean by variables? the tank? water params? lighting? type of coral?

Yes that but also with in individual LED fixtures themselves there can be big variables. At bare minimum you atleast want an LED fixture that is dimmable. Individual diode control is best.That meaning instead of a couple channels to control you can control each individual color. As stated never start LED's full blast, they are way more powerful than you may think. Start low and slowly light acclimate every new addition.

 

[reepher315]

+1 to dimmable. I run full spectrum 165w dimmables and my coral look real nice lately.

 

[Mael]

Either way Dimmable is a requirement for marine LED's as mentioned above, more expensive units can control more channels, I wont get into if more than 2 channels are necessary, but it is a nice feature especially if you are running sunrise/sunset functions with your lights.

 

[Mael]

Also I like that DIY setup Manny, next month our local reef group is having a DIY LED workshop during our meeting with the Rapid LED guys, bext part is they are putting together a unit during the demonstration and then raffling it off.