LED lights

ive got a old hamilton 250w halide its like 7yrs old and i can keep virtually anything under it with ease and it flurish the only thing is i use to have 2 during my first move it got destroyed long story there. Do to a stupid x girl of mine i lost my whole tank last winter ive been searching everywhere for one of those kinda lights but no luck so i wanted to test leds when it comes to them im like wow totally new field for me

 

i wanted to test out the cheaper route first to see if they are worth a damn b4 i commit to buying a 4 or 5 hundred dollar system that i'll end up ebaying etc

 

Well there are a lot of options in a wide price range. It will be easiest to help if you had a certain price range in mind.

 

You could go the DIY route and spend roughly $350 on a dimmable 48 bulb unit with Cree lights (considered top of the line) and Meanwell drivers (also considered top of the line). It also gives you the option of adding specific colors instead of just white and blue. You can also add specific lenses that allow you to focus the light more.

http://www.rapidled.com/48-ultra-premium-led-diy-kit-with-dimmable-drivers/

Or you could go with these type of units (several different companies sell similar ones): http://reefbreeders.com/value_led_fixtures.html

 

basically i dont want to go over 200 and im not that great at DIY stuff

 

These are your best bet then: reefbreeders

I just ordered one and received it in the mail yesterday.

PAR values provided in image. 100% power, 24" to sand bed, 24 inches long tank.

 

I think for a larger tank, you will need to make sure few things.
1) How deep is your tank ( Some LED chip can penetrate deeper than others)
2) What kind of SPS you keeping and the placement (LED sometimes can cause very bad "sun burn" to SPS, you will need to make sure you start in the lower section of your tank and move up)
3)The lense on the fixture ( LED is more like lazer than shoots light beams, it need lense to spread the lights)


I think overall if you lense is about 60-90 degree its good enough and also if your tank is between 24-27 inch tall, if u using CREE chip you might need to turn the intensity down to about 80 to 85%. If you uing other chip then 100% could be fine.

Hope these info helps

 

I have ai super blues over my tank and love em. If you get the controller i think you can set 15 or 20 different timers. Your can adjust the intensity of the whites, blues and royal blues seperatly. You can have them fade on and off like sunset and sunrise. When you get new corals you can put them where you want them and just turn the lights down to acclimate them. My other choice when I was looking were the radions because they have red and green also but those are a bit price. From my experience kessels are good for shallow frag tanks. I had ecoxotic but didnt like them. I didnt feel they had a good enough par for lps and sps. They might be good for softies though. If you want to keep lps and/or sps I think you will be more then happy with ai or radion. The problem with some of the cheaper units they are made for hydroponics and arent that water proof or have the correct color wavelenghts for corals. Just my 2 cents.

 

I don't think that is entirely fair to say. To be honest, I don't believe ANY LED system has the spectrum down yet, but there are cheaper fixtures out there now that include more than just full spectrum 14000 K and 460 nm bulbs now.