A Reefer's Journey

[fooser]

Originally Posted by lastlight

You replaced 6 halides on an 8 foot tank with a 6-foot LED fixture with a somewhat narrow spread. Can you update us on how that's panned out so far?

Hi Brett, Sorry, I did not even see that post, I put the reefing on hold for a few months there. The LEDs are so much better than 6 halides! I think it may be a worthwhile consideration for you to switch as well if you have not already, since you are running a large system as well and would need some pretty hardcore lighting. I cannot say how much my electricity bill has gone down exactly each month since the amount of things in a new house has changed the overall usage in my household, but I can say that I am still paying less than I used to, even including the fact that I am fully moved in now and so is my wife (compared to only me living here and hardly ever home before).

With respect to the corals, I increased the intensity far too quickly. Some of my SPS near mid level and upwards in the tank bleached out quite a bit (even only at about 70% intensity). I turned it down to about 40% on the whites and 50% for both Blue and Royal Blue. I have since slowly increased to 50% white, 70%blue and 70%royal blue (about 2 or 3% increase per week). I have not added any of the red LED modules so cannot comment on that. I did only mount my lights about 8" from water surface, so I added in a 24" glow T5 i had lying around on each end of the tank running back to front to cover the very last 6" of each end of my tank. I suppose that since I am not even using nearly 100% of the Illumina's full capabilities, I could also have raised the unit and allowed the spread of the LEDs to reach the ends as well instead of adding the Glo T5s.

Growth is good, colors are coming back on whatever bleached before, and corals on the ones that didn't bleach are popping. I like how you can really play with the Blues and white to configure the look you want. The ability to set how long your sunrise and sunsets last is kind of neat too so you can have things light up more naturally (really nice for new coral additions to not stress them out for the first while that you have them). The fact that you can adjust your LED intensity settings temporarily is also great for adding new fish and corals as well.

To sum it up; great choice, would not go back, also strongly recommend to others. Ballast is tiny, wires are easy to manage, easy to mount in a neat and clutter free manner.

Hope that helps Brett.