2 of these for my biocube?

Stevesleds or Rapid would be much better than the aquastyle

 

I'd say the Steve's led as well. That's a perfect retro kit that can be purchased assembled and still very affordable. I'm having great results with a par 38 on my 10g, but it's on a gooseneck.

 

I vote for a Rapid upgrade, on my 40B I currently run three panaroma pros but for the price I believe a kit From Rapid LED would make the best impact overall and best bang for your buck.

 

RapidLED and Steve's LED's would be better than Aquastyle, but the latter would be cheaper, so that's why I listed it.

 

If you could fit them and a heatsink in the hood, 6 XT-E 3 up emitters from LEDGroupBuy would be able to keep everything. The drivers will be about 60 dollars but since you only need one heatsink, you should be able to do it for about $180. You could probably find cheaper drivers than the 32 dollar MeanWells and save a bit, or if you already have a PWM signal generator, use MeanWell LDD and a DC power supply. This setup would be equivalent to the output of the Aquastyle 36 LED Kit if not a little bit more while using about half the power and as such, less heat.

A separate option is to use multichips such as the Luxeon M and Cree MK-R when it becomes available. They will likely be cheaper per lumen than the XT-E though they may be a bit less blended. Luxeon has a royal blue 12W which I was contacting FutureElectronics about as well.

The reason I don't like StevesLEDs is due to the white bins carried not being very efficient in datasheets. They are much less than the XT-E or XP-G even. I can't seem to find a reason why the datasheets say so, but I trust them. The royal blues are incredible though, at the XT-E level and worth their price or even a bit more. If you want to buy separate LEDs, the Rebel ES are cheaper and perform as well as the XT-E. This is completely ignoring the fact that the XT-E are measured at 85C and the Rebel ES is at 25C.

Relevant table I made comparing a few common LEDs. Higher mW or Lumen / Dollar is better, as is higher mW or Lumen / Watt.

 

You would need more leds from aquastyle to get similar PAR compared to any other diy kits. Which would be less efficient.

 

I'm probably going to keep my pc's and add a magenta/rb stunner to it to add some color

 

Here is what I did with my biocube and LED' panorama pro. Been great so far.

Panorama Pro 2.0 Modules for biocubes - General Discussion - Nano-Reef.com Forums

 

I have 1 stunner in my tank to add a little spectrum (but not much at all).

Exactly what type of corals are you looking to keep?