lighting question

[jehenry89]

Starting my first salt water tank. I have all the equipment but a light. I am planning on doing a soft coral tank and I want to get some suggestions for an LED light. I have a freshwater tank but I use t5's for that so this will be my first LED light. Can someone explain to me what I should be looking for please.

The tank is 50 gallons.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Sniperhank]

LEDs penetrate water extremely well. A great example of LEDs is the taotronic LEDs. These are LED panels that provide 3 watts per LED diode, which provides enough power to successfully keep anemone, clam, and SPS corals. 2-3 watts per diode is enough to keep LPS and SPS corals.
With this being said, reflect back to you wanting to keep soft corals. I have read that the Marineland reef compatible LED unit can support low light soft corals...BUT I don't know how long these units will get and it might be a stretch over a 50 gallon. I personally would either go with a T5HO unit over a 50, like you have for your freshwater tanks, or utilize how cheap the Taotronic units are and use the units that dim to your advantage. This will let you adjust the lighting to exactly your needs and get more light intensive corals down the road if you want to try it, and we always end up doing so.

 

[jehenry89]

Thanks for the response. I personally fixture wanted to do a t5 fixture because I know about them already from my freshwater tank. However, when I went to the store the sales guy kept pushing toward the LED lights and tbh, I wouldn't mind because I think the 10,000k t5 bulbs look like hospital lights lol. I was looking to do moderate to high light. Do these Taotronic lights have to be suspended from the ceiling? If so thats not really an option for me. I need something I can put on the top of the tank.

 

[Sniperhank]

They hang, but what is stopping you from hanging them from the wall, inside a canopy, or making your own rail system?

 

[jehenry89]

Can't do the wall because of a window and I don't really want to drill into the ceiling since its not my house and I probably wont be there much longer.

 

[Sniperhank]

I'd hold off on the build until more permanent. Moving tanks and stirring things up leads to failure.