led in my coralife biocube?

sorry for the possible dumb question, still new to this. i have the coralife biocube 29 with the four extra slots for led's. will adding the led's help maintain and grow coral? thanks for any response.

 

Following, Also interested.

But I wonder, when comparing how much it would cost to fill up the extra slots, if you might as well go with a reefbreeder unit (if a unit is appealing to you).....

 

............And there are no dumb questions. Only expensive consequences when you dont ask! : )

 

I think you probly will be able to hold corals, adding LED won't make a huge different on your capability of keeping coral. You will be able to keep most soft coral and LPS with no problem as long as you are on top of your light bulb switching.

If you like the shimmering of the LED, I would suggest you remove your full PC and either mod a DYI LED in the hood or remove the hood entirely and use PAR38 to keep your corals

 

I don't know that the modular units that Coralife sells actually add that much PAR, but I would recommend getting a Rapid LED kit to retrofit the hood if you want greater PAR.

What are you looking to try to keep? You actually should be able to have SPS with the stock lighting if you keep it high enough in the tank.

 

I would never keep SPS under the stock lighting. That is another reason why they had another version with MH. Simply because the stock lighting is not able to keep everything under it.

 

Try asking coralife about their LED bars, I don't know the specs on them, but it's unlikely they will add much to coral growing capability, but you never know, maybe they are pretty powerful, hopefully thier support people are decent and can tell you. If you are not huge into DIY panorama pro's are a good option. I ended up removing the PC bulbs and ballasts and replaced them with 2 pro's and 1 stunner while keeping the stock moon light and fans in my 14 cube. SPS is growing too fast for my tank now!

 

As far as I know the led lights from coralife aren't powerful enough to really add anything besides color to the tank. If you want to go led's than I would look at a rapidLED retrofit kit, or ditching the hood and putting a stand alone fixture over it. The nova4 from reefbreeders might work well!

 

If you really want LEDs i would seriously Consider Steves-LED kit that he sells, you can buy an entire kit from him that will completely retrofit your biocube with leds. Hes a really nice guy that will help you if you have questions and also offers a great return policy for damaged items!
Steve's LEDs, discount DIY LED supplies