Blue lights or full spectrum?

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Wheelman76

I don't have much experience when it comes to LEDs but I've never read of someone running all colours at 100% unless it was just white/blue/royal blues and even then I would think that might be a little hard on Acros with the whites on at 100%. If the LEDs have other colours like reds and cyan or uv LEDs I can't imagine running those at 100% and certainly no manufacturer making LEDs would recommend doing so.

Sorry, forgot about this

Yes, I ran AI Sols, so just those three colors, but all at 100%, ramped up from initial 60% over about 5 days. No issues at all with acros or the couple euphyllia that I had.
One thing I noticed with people that had more advanced light systems, they tended to not run any of the additional colors above say, 15%. Maybe some Radion users ran the reds higher, but the Mitras with the greens and yellows, very little of that was used. Would it be bad if they ran at 100%? Maybe, not sure.

[smokinreefer]

I'm gonna venture to guess that brad had great success transitioning his tank to his LEDs at all channels at 100% because he was providing his tank with a comparable light source, 400W MH, a light that not as many people use anymore, but most of us long time sps keepers used to strive for!

I know that my best mixed reef display was a 180 lit with 2 x 400w MH.
And I can tell you this, I could put just about any coral any place in the tank.
Including sps on the sandbed.

Times have changed, and with new technology comes new trends.
Maybe better, maybe not. In some ways yes, and some ways no.

Having said that, I'm looking into a "full" spectrum led solution for my next display.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by smokinreefer

I'm gonna venture to guess that brad had great success transitioning his tank to his LEDs at all channels at 100% because he was providing his tank with a comparable light source, 400W MH, .

Yes, exactly this. LEDs aren't going to suddenly overpower 3 x 400mh, so I was able to hit them with 100% right away.

[Myka]

One thing that I've noticed from running a tank maintenance company is that the corals in the tanks lit with LEDs are more finicky. The T5 lit tanks are just "easier" to make corals happy. There are so many variables, but I can definitely say that for some reason LEDs make it so you have a smaller margin of error, and some corals just don't thrive under LEDs. All my T5 lit tanks I can put pretty much any coral in the tank in an appropriate placing and it will thrive.

Having said that, I find in particular, the LPS corals that we're getting these days compared to 8 or 10 years ago need far less light than they used to. I think this is probably from collectors having to dive deeper these days and the corals originating from deeper depths and less light. For LPS tanks, I like to run all blue bulbs (like Blue Plus, not all actinic lol). LPS really need very little light to thrive. My own SPS tank has 6 T5 bulbs and 3 are white, 2 are blue, and 1 is actinic.