Question on LED lights (for mostly zoos, chalice no sps)

[NanoAquatic]

Anybody know a good affordable LED light good enough to just keep soft corals, chalices, etc? I'm not keeping sps.

I don't know much about these new LED lights. Currently i'm using a metal halide, but for the corals I have, i think it's an overkill. Also, electric bill is going out of hand. Someone enlighten me:idea: about this LED lights. Please let me know what brand is worth it and how much it would cost for a descent LED light to keep corals. I don't plan on purchasing a $2000 light.

 

[cozer]

Anybody know a good affordable LED light good enough to just keep soft corals, chalices, etc? I'm not keeping sps.

I don't know much about these new LED lights. Currently i'm using a metal halide, but for the corals I have, i think it's an overkill. Also, electric bill is going out of hand. Someone enlighten me:idea: about this LED lights. Please let me know what brand is worth it and how much it would cost for a descent LED light to keep corals. I don't plan on purchasing a $2000 light.

If you are talking about the feasibility of keeping soft corals under a LED lighting fixture, then I would say the answer should be "YES". In my opinion, for a tanks with depth less than 24", a densely (distance between lamps < 1") arranged 1W (e.g. 3.5V, 350mA, CREE) LED lamps or normally (distance between lamps > 2") spaced 3W LED lamps will be suitable for the light either on light coverage and penetration. If one has a tank with depth larger than 24", densely arranged 2.45W (e.g. 3.5V, 700mA, CREE) lamps with optic lens or normally spaced 3.5W (e.g. 3.5V, 1000mA, CREE) will be better choices.

As for the ratio of blue and white lamps, a 2:1 ratio of blue/white lamps provides a ~14,000K light which will pop up the colors of the soft corals while a 1:1 ratio might result in a ~10,000K light which should fullfill the light requirement for most SPS.

Moreover, I think UV spectrum should also be taken into consideration since most of the commercial available LEDs, either white or blue, are lack of UV. If you keep lots of zoas and/or shallow water soft corals, UV should be an essential factor on either color and health of these corals. I am keeping lots of zoas under a LED light fixture with UV LEDs in it, and found that they all perform nicely compared with what they looked like when they were under my former LED fixture (without UV LEDs).