Lighting for zoas & mushrooms

[mattscheck4]

Everyone seems to be asking about lighting recently, and I'm no exception. Will LED lights support zoas and mushrooms? I'm going to have a dwarf seahorse tank, and those are the two corals I've decided to go with. I just don't know about lighting. I'm considering this, but I want to know first if it'll support both those corals. Thanks!

 

[Zer0]

No. Those wont support anything. Each of those LED's are only 1W.. which is nothing compared to real lights. These types of LED's are basically just for show in smaller tanks. You can only start supporting coral if you have the larger LED fixtures that are just as intense as metal halides. But those fixtures cost upwards of around $3,000

Check out this thread and you'll know exactly what i mean.

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f60/led-lighting-mh-126691.html

 

[cmor1701d]

As stated that fixture won't do much but light the tank for viewing. Depenidng on the size of the tank and how much control you want over the lighting (color, changes during the day, etc.) a LED fixture is considerly under $3,000. A single unit of the BT from PacificSun is well under $1,000, the BT-EX (fully controllable) is just over $1k (master). For my 72" tank I ordered 1 master and 2 slave units.
There are other, cheaper, chinese imports and others also available.

 

[mattscheck4]

Update: I'm thinking a Nova T5 2x18w (1 blue actinic & 1 10K). Better?

 

[Zer0]

With that light fixture over a 10G tank you will be able to support any softies, mushrooms, zoas, and LPS. You may be able to get away with some low-light SPS(like montis) if placed higher in the tank, but i would advise against it considering the light may not be strong enough AND you may have trouble keeping your parameters in check to maintain a good quality of life for the SPS, which they need to flourish. You will also have less margin for error in a tank with such a low water volume.

But if you plan to keep softies and the other things i mentioned above, that light fixture will be just perfect. That is the exact light fixture i purchased for my 10G tank. Besides the softies i mentioned, I only plan to keep a frogspawn(LPS), but that's it for LPS. Should do fine as well, but we'll see how that goes. After my tank has been running for a good amount of time and params seem stable, maybe i'll try out a monti cap.. but i may just leave that for when i upgrade to a 40 breeder and have a 6-bulb T5 fixture over it. Who knows.

Credit goes to ccCapt for helping me out with this lighting decision.

 

[sgc0286]

Did you recieve those yet CMOR?