Additional supplemental LED lighting needed?

barndtman84 · Sep 29, 2012

I recently moved my reef from my 90 gal to my 125 gal with dual returns. Now for lighting I have 3 20watt 14K LED spotlight style.

Now my ? Is should I add supplimental blue LED's? Now my coral look great and I have all sorts of corals from softies to lps and sps. I personally think it would only help my reef as I have a refugium as well idk why I just mentioned that lol. Any info or tips are apriciated.

CRW Reefer · Sep 29, 2012

You only have a total of 60watts of LEDs on a 120 and the corals look great? Wow I have 240w on my 75 and can't hardly say that about all my corals and feel I might need more lol. Good job that shows some skills and great husbandry practices.

barndtman84 · Sep 30, 2012

Thanks lol I hear ppl tell me that I need more wattage but honestly my corals look as good if not better then when they were under 2 120watt blue reef LED fixture that still cost $450 a pop. Now I do a lot of husbandry in the form of water changes and weekly suppliments which I swear by brightwells lugol's, amino acid, & trace elements and vitamans.

But I grow softies, LPS, & SPS so I guessy only issue is whether to add actinic lighting. Oh also my chaeto seems to not be growing to well and I have never had this issue before and my nitrates are low but not too low & P04 is 0.05 ppm with Hanna checker any advice is apriciated.

barndtman84 · Sep 30, 2012

Here are some updated pics.

barndtman84 · Sep 30, 2012

Reef Breeders · Sep 30, 2012

I would add some 455nm royals, 420nm violets, 500nm cyans, and 630/660nm reds, then you will get some POP out of those corals. I would do way more wattage, closer to 360watts total, but that is for an sps dominant system, you could do okay with softies and nps, which you have now.

barndtman84 · Sep 30, 2012

Yeah I agree I do have an ecoxotic panorama pro RGB module but its not very big.

Now maybe someone can explain why my chaeto is dying I have a DIY dual refugium built outta acrylic and I have 2 jbj nano-glo's on each side running 12hr on 12hr off and my flow isn't to high but its just slowly dying and loosing color. I have grown chaeto many times before and it usually grows like crazy for me but idk so any advice is apriciated.