What really shocks me is the ecoray 112 - it has HUGE numbers, with 1 Watt bulbs! Everyone was nono-ing the 1 Watts, but i'm very impressed with the numbers, and the spread. The array bulbs seem to do great as well, very interesting article.

Glad someone finally shed some "light" on this.

*puts on sunglasses*

OOOOOOOOOOOH YEAH!

In reality the ecoray have the worst spread I've ever seen. People are hanging them 2-3 feet above frag tanks and there's still dark spots between fixtures

from what I have seen, I still like AI, and Radions best I think. but thats just my opinion

ya I still like the fixtures with even spread.... like seriously if you put a coral directly under some of those fixtures they would be toast, but move them to the side 3 inches and its all good... to me thats not a very good setup.... ill take even lower numbers any days of the week... at least I know I can mess with my tank and not burn coral....

Steve

Interesting article but I believe Aquarium Reef lighting is more complicated than mentioned, I didn't see any reference to PUR (Photosynthetically Usable Radiation) which is actually more important than PAR. I'm no lighting expert but from what I have read (one or two articles pertaining to Reef LED), allot of PUR light is is not produced by the lower priced emitters (1W etc.) which may appear brighter (to the human eye) and produce more PAR than higher end LED that do provide the PUR spectrums that are required by most stony corals (zooxanthellae photopigments)...

If your up for the read...

AQUARIUM LIGHTING
By Carl Strohmeyer
Updated 1/08/12






[edit] fixed link...

I got the article from my Facebook link, personally I didn't understand it all but I thought others might find the info useful and helpful.

Vividaquarium in usa is setting half of their 800 gallon tank mh, other with led radions...using same stock on either side...we will see which is better in a few months for growth.

Majboy

An excellent article from Sanjay Joshi who is THE acknowledged expert in aquarium lighting for well over a decade.

Thanks for posting it Fishoholic!

60 degree optics goes a long way. Not much spread though look how fast the numbers drop as you move away from center vs the radion.

I'm actually feeling a little underwhelmed at the showing of the Radions. I know they're more even, but they do seem to get blown out of the water in terms of PAR by a whole bunch of other fixtures. For nearly 800 bucks a pop, "is it going to be enough to grow clams on the sand bed (or anything else that I want) in a 24-26" deep tank?" shouldn't even be a question that needs answering with a months long experiments in fish stores and on reef blogs, it should have been obvious from the very first test some reefer did with their at-home meter. I was set on getting 6 of them for my tank until I saw people posting PAR numbers in the low 200s at 12 inches deep. I know people keep saying that might not be as important for LEDs, but we have to evaluate new information within our existing framework until a new framework exists, and according to what we've all been learning for the past several decades, those numbers are really not impressive.

*sigh*, more waiting while other people are the guinea pigs I guess.