Hello,
The famous debate of what light lol always just kills me. Here is my advice and that is, find a light you think has good color etc. visit an aquarium and lfs etc. you don’t need economic or hydra for this size of a tank or larger. I mean I have a 240 and us current usa marine pros 4117 version and they grow corals like crazy sps lps etc.
If you find the critical angle you can avoid shadow effect till they start growing. Puck lights are not ideal of you want to eliminate shadow affect. The led lights that are the length of your tank would have less shadow effect and less light bleed or wasted energy.
Even high sps only need 200 par to actually thrive very well. If I recall you wanted softies and lps which any light really would work. Even if you wanted sps you could use reefbrites or even mars aqua and still grow anything. Every tank is different and grows different, lights are just one part of the math probelm.
Just to give you an example my tank is 240 gallons it’s 34 inches tall and 24 deep and 72 long. It’s less than 2 years old and this is the growth from using current usa lights.
The whites are set at 33% and blues 100 during the 12 hour cycle period. So these photos are in normal light with my horrible iPhone.
The famous debate of what light lol always just kills me. Here is my advice and that is, find a light you think has good color etc. visit an aquarium and lfs etc. you don’t need economic or hydra for this size of a tank or larger. I mean I have a 240 and us current usa marine pros 4117 version and they grow corals like crazy sps lps etc.
If you find the critical angle you can avoid shadow effect till they start growing. Puck lights are not ideal of you want to eliminate shadow affect. The led lights that are the length of your tank would have less shadow effect and less light bleed or wasted energy.
Even high sps only need 200 par to actually thrive very well. If I recall you wanted softies and lps which any light really would work. Even if you wanted sps you could use reefbrites or even mars aqua and still grow anything. Every tank is different and grows different, lights are just one part of the math probelm.
Just to give you an example my tank is 240 gallons it’s 34 inches tall and 24 deep and 72 long. It’s less than 2 years old and this is the growth from using current usa lights.
The whites are set at 33% and blues 100 during the 12 hour cycle period. So these photos are in normal light with my horrible iPhone.