Too much light?

[SoCaliReefin]

Is there a wattage rule to LEDs? Watts per gallon?
I have 90 watt of LED over a 30gal 12H frag tank.
Is that too much light?

 

[ronnie]

I'd be curious to know if there is a hard fast rule as well. It may have saved me several LEDs on my 8'x3'x1' frag tank.

I'm running 78 LEDS over a 12" frag tank on a 24"x10" U Channel layout (on a light mover) and with the LEDs at 100%, the PAR is 550 on the bottom with the fixture mounted 21" above the tank. Probably a bit of overkill.... :D

 

[CaiN]

most people go by this, find the surface area of your tank, multiply width x length and divide by:
20 for softies
15 for lps
10 for hardcore too much light deep tanks.

whatever is the result is the approximate number of LED's you need to light your tank.

 

[Troylee]

Is there a wattage rule to LEDs? Watts per gallon?
I have 90 watt of LED over a 30gal 12H frag tank.
Is that too much light?

What kind of LEDs?? A diy kit or a pre made fixture... That's the real question here lol.. Not all LEDs are created equal..;)

 

[SoCaliReefin]

What kind of LEDs?? A diy kit or a pre made fixture... That's the real question here lol.. Not all LEDs are created equal..;)

60 - 3 watt Cree LEDs, run at 1.5 watt each for a total of 90 watts.
Frag tank is 24x24x12, but you know that TroyLee... :bigsmile:

 

[Troylee]

Yeah that's a lot if light man haha... Way to much IMHO... After my go around with LEDs I would say 36 would be more than enough for that tank and prolly still give ya problems with chalices etc... Make sure you aclimate all the corals over the next month or 2 and you would be prolly ok....

 

[SoCaliReefin]

I have it about 14" above the water line. So far everything looks ok but, I just wanted some opinions from experienced LED'ers. I read your thread about moving your coral from your LED setup back to MH. Ouch..
I will move some corals back to my T5 setup after a few weeks and see how they really look.
LEDs make everything thing look good and some pieces look amazing!

 

[SethTheWineGuy]

LED's are very deceptive in their brightness. They don't have the "bleed" that MH do. Their light is more a particle beam light opposed to a wave length light. If that makes sense.

 

[SoCaliReefin]

LED's are very deceptive in their brightness. They don't have the "bleed" that MH do. Their light is more a particle beam light opposed to a wave length light. If that makes sense.

More usable light and less useless light?

 

[SethTheWineGuy]

More usable light and less useless light?

That's probably a way of looking at it. Kind of like the difference between using a light bulb to look at a bug on the wall vs a flashlight.