Thinking about upgrading my Current USA Orbit Marine Pro

[Raymond Gathright]

Without going into details, I'm fighting Non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. My long term prognosis isn't great. I'm not seeking anyone's sympathy, just understanding that it screws with my thought process.
At any rate, I have been slowly upgrading my 75 gallon aquarium. I'm actually, for the first time in ten years having some success growing corals.
I'm worried that my light my not be good enough. Again, I'm using a 48" Current USA Orbit Marine LED I can't remember my settings at the moment, but my LFS said he thought that they looked good to him.
My questions are: without spending both an arm and a leg, what would be a better system to get? Or, am I good with what I have? Would adding another Current USA work? Should I just trash the whole system? Keep in mind there are many days that I really need a timer... I do good to even get up and feed my fish/corals. Some days my wife does.
Also, forgive the stupidity of this question, I really prefer the bluer end of the spectrum, especially with the zoas. How "blue" is safe before its to dark.
As far as corals, my goals are zoa gardens, some firework clove, hammer coral... maybe an acan.
Forgive the length of the post. Any help will be appreciated, Raymond.

 

[Ron Reefman]

Hi Raymond,
Current Orbit led fixtures are good for FOWLR and shallow coral tanks (under 16" deep). Even their own PAR rating chart shows terrible low numbers for more than 12" to 16" deep into a tank. It's hard to keep much nice coral with PAR levels below 100.

Look at a good Black Box fixture like Mars Aqua or Viparspectra (probably on ebay or amazon). They both good quality fixtures and both offer a 32" version which should be fine over your tank.

A second Current fixture doesn't help. The 0.3 watt leds just don't penetrate the water enough. The better black box fixtures use 3 watt leds.

More blue is not 'darker' to your coral. It is to your eyes, but the algae (zooxanthellae) inside your coral use blue spectrum to do photosynthesis. You could run a tank on all blue light for weeks and the coral would be OK. But they do need some other spectrum long term, so white light does matter.

I'm into corals and anemones that fluoresce, so blue spectrum is my favorite as well. My tank is mostly blue for a few hours in the morning, mixed blue (70%) and white (30%) for 6 to 8 hours during the midday and mostly or all blue for 5 hours into the night.

 

[MagicMiller72]

Hi Raymond,
Current Orbit led fixtures are good for FOWLR and shallow coral tanks (under 16" deep). Even their own PAR rating chart shows terrible low numbers for more than 12" to 16" deep into a tank. It's hard to keep much nice coral with PAR levels below 100.

Look at a good Black Box fixture like Mars Aqua or Viparspectra (probably on ebay or amazon). They both good quality fixtures and both offer a 32" version which should be fine over your tank.

A second Current fixture doesn't help. The 0.3 watt leds just don't penetrate the water enough. The better black box fixtures use 3 watt leds.

More blue is not 'darker' to your coral. It is to your eyes, but the algae (zooxanthellae) inside your coral use blue spectrum to do photosynthesis. You could run a tank on all blue light for weeks and the coral would be OK. But they do need some other spectrum long term, so white light does matter.

I'm into corals and anemones that fluoresce, so blue spectrum is my favorite as well. My tank is mostly blue for a few hours in the morning, mixed blue (70%) and white (30%) for 6 to 8 hours during the midday and mostly or all blue for 5 hours into the night.

That looks awesome! I want my 55 to look like that...lol

 

[Ron Reefman]

That looks awesome! I want my 55 to look like that...lol

Well, I broke that 40g down and I'm working on growing a 90g tank. The old 40g is now a local collection tank for stuff I can collect in the Florida Key and around home in SW Florida.