Sps Dominant tank, lighting selection help

[Danh Ngo]

I’m building a new tank 36”L x 22”W x 22”H. Looking to have an sps dominant tank, can anyone give some suggestion ?
Radion, hydra, t5, or hybrid? If hydra or radion, how many of them should I need
I’m thinking about Aquaticlife hybrid 36” 4 t5 + 2 hydra 26/2 xr15

 

[Scorpius]

Kessil 360 series at least 2 of them or 1 AP700 with 4-36in T5's. Run the Kessil/s in the middle with 2-T5's behind and in front of the Kessil/s.

 

[jda]

What are your goals? Pure performance? Mess-around ability? Plug and play? Tried and true? High tech?

Any of those can work with varying degrees of success depending on what you are after.

For starters, if you are a pure-performance, tried and true person, then 2x150W HQI Halides with T5s will be the way to go. For high end tech, then some of the Euro Panels like Atlantik V4 would be my LED choice. 6 or 8x T5s always works for tried and true and plug and play.

 

[Crabs McJones]

I second the Aquatic Lift hybrid with a pair of A360's :)

 

[Danh Ngo]

What are your goals? Pure performance? Mess-around ability? Plug and play? Tried and true? High tech?

Any of those can work with varying degrees of success depending on what you are after.

For starters, if you are a pure-performance, tried and true person, then 2x150W HQI Halides with T5s will be the way to go. For high end tech, then some of the Euro Panels like Atlantik V4 would be my LED choice. 6 or 8x T5s always works for tried and true and plug and play.

I dont really like MH trying to use LED T5

 

[Danh Ngo]

I second the Aquatic Lift hybrid with a pair of A360's :)

I current have kessil, I want to try with hydra26 or radion, because I feel like kesil does not have a good coverage

 

[Danh Ngo]

Kessil 360 series at least 2 of them or 1 AP700 with 4-36in T5's. Run the Kessil/s in the middle with 2-T5's behind and in front of the Kessil/s.

Currently run kessil with t5 on one of my nano tank, it is good at some point but it still have some kind of shadow spot

 

[jda]

Radion or Hydra do not cover any better than a Kessil. Two of them can, but so can two kessils. You will nearly always have coverage and hot-spot issues with the point-source LEDs - the best that you can hope for is a really powerful cone directly under then with weaker areas on the sides. While this is manageable for most, some will never be happy with it... like me, who would chose a large panel unit.

 

[Crabs McJones]

Radion or Hydra do not cover any better than a Kessil. Two of them can, but so can two kessils. You will nearly always have coverage and hot-spot issues with the point-source LEDs - the best that you can hope for is a really powerful cone directly under then with weaker areas on the sides. While this is manageable for most, some will never be happy with it... like me, who would chose a large panel unit.

I agree, while it is a single point light source, they have awesome spread, and a single kessil A360WE has the capability to cover a 24x24 area (granted there would be shadowing on the sides) but you'll get shadowing with any single point light source, the radions and the hydras have this issues as well although not as bad. The only way to avoid that is to get the blanket coverage of the T5's where there isn't a single point light source but a whole row of random light output.