SPS tank - Switch from T5 to 2x Kessil A160EW - Thoughts?
 

Hey all

I have had to move so I sold my old tank and have all my corals over at Kellys place under his T5 lights. They were always under T5 on my old tank as well.

Now that I am in Victoria I have set up a new Nuvo 38g Mini nano with 2 A160Ew Kessils.

Just wanted to hear everyone thoughts on the transition over to these LED from the T5 lights. I also have the controller so I can change the light through the day with a max of 40% intensity.

Has anyone else switched over like this? How did your corals fare out?

Thanks!

I would go with one a360w over 2 160 for a 38g tank . I went from t5's on my 3 foot tank to one 360w and the kessil looks so much better IMO .

I all ready bought the lights from J&L so I kinda stuck as I cannot return them very easy as I am on the island.

So with that being said.. same question haha :)

I switched from led,s to a 6 bulb ATI. And back to led,s. My sps never missed beat because of the lighting. I kept my led,s lower intensity to start then raised it a bit every week or so.

I've tried EcoTech Radions, Ai Hydra 52, GHL Mitras 6200 and none of them produce the same effortless coloration than I can get with metal halides.

I am not alone. There are endless threads on RC and there seems to be something SPS are missing from LED spectrum.

I will be the first to make the switch to LED once its proven. You should see my power bills. lol

Sanjay Joshi grows crazy SPS under LEDs. He has some magic potion I think - maybe unicorn poop. Until I can find some I'll stick with T5. All my clients have LED and I am still not on board.

I am not saying LED's don't work for SPS. There are plenty of examples online.

Growth is easy. Coloration is a whole different story.

I must chime in 😀 sps coloration is based on keeping steady ideal parameters over months if not years. Lighting has little to do with coloration. Yes you can get coral pop with high k lighting but your corals will still be brown if your nitrate is to high and phosphates are detectable. If you can get coral pop under 10k led mh or t5 than you are approaching mastery.
My experience is with the 360we over two years now but on a smaller tank I am sure you will be surprised with you 160ew

I've always maintained roughly the same parameters on our 600g SPS system.

Specific gravity: 1.025-1.026 (calibrated refractometer)
Calcium: 410-420ppm (Salifert)
Alkalinity: 8-9dKH (Hanna Checker)
Magnesium: 1350-1400 (Salifert)
Nitrate: 1ppm (Salifert)
Phosphate: 0-0.02ppm (Hanna Checker HI 736)
Potassium: 400ppm (Salifert)

Lighting made such a massive difference when I switched from LED to MH, it was downright shocking.

There are so many variables when it comes to LED like the color temps, and intensities that maybe I was never able to find the right settings.

I had the most success with EcoTech Radions but they were not very forgiving. The second I would make a mistake with water quality, I would loose color.

Recently, I experimented with dosing Potassium Nitrate to my system to see what would happen to my SPS with elevated levels of nitrates. I slowly brought it up to 25ppm and very little changed. My SPS got a little deeper in color but that was about it. The other side-effect was algae, even with ultra low levels of phosphates.

:thumb: This describes Sanjay. That man can grow SPS like nobody's business! It doesn't matter which light he uses he grows colonies out of frags in months, and color to die for. Unicorn poop I say.

Holy crap! Most people use nitrate dosing to achieve trace amounts of nitrate or maybe up to 5 ppm, not 25 ppm! :eek: Why did you go so high? How long did you elevate it for? I dose Sodium nitrate to achieve 0.2-0.5 ppm nitrate.

I did it slowly and noticed very little difference at the 5ppm range so I kept going until I could see a real difference. :lol:

I have always had success growing SPS under T5 but wanted to try something new for this nano tank. If I do not find great results within a few months I was thinking of adding a 2 bulb 24” T5 fixture with ATI bulbs.. Just to add some extra light if I need to. I think that would be fine to grow my SPS. Tank is only 13” wide so it would be tough to add more than that.

Keeping your parms close as much to perfect is key I have found for color in my SPS. Time will only tell..

You will only see a difference if your tank was nitrate limited to begin with. If your inhabitants used up essentially an equal amount of nitrate as was being produced, then they weren't nitrate limited. You don't need to have lots of nitrate.

Have you heard of the Redfield Ratio? "In 1934, Alfred Redfield discovered that the ratio of carbon to nitrogen to phosphorus is a nearly constant 106:16:1 throughout the world's oceans, in both phytoplankton biomass and in dissolved nutrient pools."

Nitrogen isn't the same as nitrate (some test kits do measure nitrogen though), but it reminds us to bear in mind the relationship between the two (or three). This points to the fact of your gross overdosing of nitrate. :lol:



But I digress, this thread is about light. I'm still on the fence about that. I have seen many tanks in person under LEDs that had amazing coloring, though it was always limited to the top side of the branches since LED won't "wrap around" the coral like T5 or halide light does. IMO, it's easier to achieve good coloring using T5 or halide, but it's certainly not impossible to achieve such with LEDs. The proof is in the pudding. It has been resoundingly proven that it is possible.

I can't argue with halides for sps. The corals I get from Canada Corals are stunning. And recently visiting another reefer in Calgary.

However. My sps in the 50g before trying the upgrade failure were very nice colour. Could not ask for more. And good growth. I was running a pair of Evergrow 2040,s. Thus the main reason I ordered another Evergrow 2080 for the 50g thats getting set up again.

II did look at two different used halide systems but in the end, Im happy with my decision.

I have also noticed the same thing in regards to my led's not wrapping around the branches. I think its because the light source is so concetrated with led, while halides and t5 have large reflectors on them. Maybe we just need wider led fixtures to get better front to back coverage?

I have always wanted to try to aim a kessil upside down into a nice MH reflector :)

So I got all my corals in the tank yesterday and will post my findings. Right now I have it set to max 35% intestacy for a few hours. I will either turn it up or down with in the next few weeks until I get a better idea how the corals are looking. Pictures to come!