Coral light

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Swimzebras

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Jan 29, 2011
Messages
983
Just upgraded my light to a reef capable marineland LED. can I keep hard corals with this? Could I keep a nem? I'm just wondering how powerful this light really is..
Thanks!
 
Not enough 1 watt LED density unless it is a pretty small tank. Each watt of most modern high power LED emitters, even ones with lenses, averages light output equivalent to better than 3 to 1 over a MH. For instance, a fixture with 100 high performance 1 watt LEDs would put out about 300 watts worth of equivalent MH if looking at a PAR meter at 24."
If the fixture uses 2 watt or 3 watt derated to 2.5 watts LEDs, the math works the same. I have written and been attacked quite a bit over this topic even after posting video of growing soft and hard coral over the past year. Look at my previous posts for links and PAR testing of a brand of inexpensive lights that will actually replace or supplement MH or T5 lighting. This has been my experience as I simply didn't want to spend the kind of costs associated with most fixtures (that actually grew coral) I was finding last year when I switched over from MH. There are a lot of junk, low output fixtures out there, so look for YouTube videos or forum reviews on the topic. Apolloreefled.com has some good info.

For a smaller tank your Marineland will probably be okay. Keep us posted.
 
Yes, that will probably do. Start out slowly with the new light and let the coral adapt. Rather too little light too fast than the opposite. I use some translucent plastic to cut the light back, then over a few days, give it more and more. If it looks like the LED lighting is dimmer than what you had, it may not matter, but usually LED is brighter than you give it credit for.
 
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