T5 vs LED? Or what about both?

[ramsey]

from what ive seen lps and zoas do well under lps, its sps that do not fare well. i lost tissue in shadow areas on my colonies. it doesnt punch back off the sand like mh

what leds are you running

I agree with this from what I've seen. I think SPS can be done under LED but I think a lot of people that have problems blast too much light on SPS.

I have 5 AI sols that are going over my 185g. I'm thinking about adding four retrofit t5's as well and have them in a floating canopy. The radion pro has me spoiled and I think a fuller spectrum is better for the coral and certainly better for looking at them. The T5s will probably be purple, pink and full spectrum. I think that'll give me nice coloration for a softie tank.

[Reefnub]

I have run led on my 65g for almost 2 years with sps dominant and can say the the under side iLife the sps do suffer a little and has always bothered me. I'm running ai sol blues and will continue to use led and try a led with uv in it which prolly will be the hydras. But I also believe that the more led coverage the better so more is better but tame down the percentage on the lights. Seems to me they try to mimic m/h with one unit but like bigpun says you don't get the bounce back off the sand or rock like halides. So I'm thinking more LEDs covering every inch of the top of the tank as possible to make up for the coverage. 2 ai sols don't seem enough for my 65g, I think I should have 4 to cover it all and get what coverage/ all angles that is what's needed. I hope this makes sence, I went to HOoter and had some buuurrrrs


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

[jcnkt_ellis]

It's not necessarily about having LEDs cover every inch of the canopy, its about having LEDs at multiple angles to the sand bed. I was wanting to run a heatsink and led setup set at a 45 degree angle to eliminate the shadows and found this article in support of it:

http://reefbuilders.com/2013/07/11/r...ving-led-woes/