I've been out of the game for a while, and I need to know if this is enough lighting.

[FishingFreak84]

I've been out of the game for a long time. LEDs just started when I was building a custom 3.5g AIO tank. At the time, no company was making lights for tanks consisting of LEDs. That's how new they were. However, people were creating their own, which I started to do before this project was put on hold.

At the time, I was told this would be enough lighting for SPS, and I just wanted to confirm it before setting up this tank, getting some expensive frags, and having them die on me.

Keep in mind, this is for a tiny 3.5g AIO tank. The lighting I built consists of:

(3) Cree XR-E Cool White & (3) Cree XR-E Royal Blue

I've set them up, so I can dim them if needed.

Thanks for any help.

 

[Will Wohlers]

I don't know if you'd have the overall spectrum to be optimal but with that being said I've seen some tanks with similar lights be successful.

 

[dbjonesjr]

Plenty of power in my opinion. Don’t necessarily need anything but the blue and white. The Aqua Knight off Amazon is pretty popular and it’s essentially all blue and white.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

Yep plenty for a 3.5 gallon. If possible swap a white for a UV 410nm led and add a single red and single green diode. If you can run them all on separate channels or at least blues and uv on one and whites, red and green on the second that would give you great control of spectrum to adjust to your liking.

 

[Jacked Reefer]

Yep plenty for a 3.5 gallon. If possible swap a white for a UV 410nm led and add a single red and single green diode. If you can run them all on separate channels or at least blues and uv on one and whites, red and green on the second that would give you great control of spectrum to adjust to your liking.

Red and green are useless. Skip those. You only need some neutral or warm whites, royal blues, and violents. The white covers the spectrum the blues and uvs don’t.

 

[FishingFreak84]

Red and green are useless. Skip those. You only need some neutral or warm whites, royal blues, and violents. The white covers the spectrum the blues and uvs don’t.

So the cool white and blue will be fine?

Thanks for all the input so far, folks.

 

[Jacked Reefer]

So the cool white and blue will be fine?

Thanks for all the input so far, folks.

I would switch out at least one cool white with a neutral white or warm white. Also putting the whites on a dimmer would allow you to fix the color to your liking

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Yea I am not expert in leds but I know a guy who had only white and blue and had his acropora spawn in his tank under those lights. I would suggest going for as many bulbs as you can and hang them much higher than normal.

 

[FishingFreak84]

I would switch out at least one cool white with a neutral white or warm white. Also putting the whites on a dimmer would allow you to fix the color to your liking

Thanks for the suggestion. As it is, the white and blues are on separate dimmers.

 

[FishingFreak84]

Yea I am not expert in leds but I know a guy who had only white and blue and had his acropora spawn in his tank under those lights. I would suggest going for as many bulbs as you can and hang them much higher than normal.

That's going to be tough. I'm making a fully enclosed cabinet for it, and planned on setting the fixture directly on top of the tank.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

Red and green are useless. Skip those. You only need some neutral or warm whites, royal blues, and violents. The white covers the spectrum the blues and uvs don’t.

Yes warm whites cover the spectrum well. But the red and greens balance the color so its more pleasing to the eye. Not needed at all but they are there in most lights for this reason. If you are going to run only the cool whites for white leds then adding red will benifit corals since some chlorophyll use light in the red spectrum. UV or purple led makes it look good as well and corals seem to do better with a little UV.
Make your canopy tall and mount the leds high to increase spread.

 

[cracker]

I assume your a new member? if so welcome! Your avatar has me thinkin your like to fish ! ME too ! However you just can't fish in a 3,5 gl tank. Better plan for a bigger tank !

 

[Softhammer]

I ran a very very successful 90 gallon for 11 years, all huge sps using ONLY those 2 leds. Perfect choice. If you do decide to supplement with UVs I have a bunch of new unused ones laying around.