Lighting Upgrade, I Hope?

Well after about 2 years of using my LED lighting and getting almost no coral growth and poor coloring from my sps corals I took them down today.
To replace my 2 144 watt Led fixtues are 2 Lumenmax 3 DE pendants with 2 dimmable 250 watt Lumatek ballasts, and 14k Aquamaxx bulbs. I am also supplimenting with 2 T5s on an Icecap 660 ballast with UVL super actinic bulbs.
I will get some before and after pics tomorrow with the LEDs and with the MH. I hope to get the color back and see some growth in my SPS corals, wish me luck.

 

Good choice. Waiting for pictures!

 

welcome back to the HID side.
I have always heard led wasn't very good for sps.

 

I had really good growth when I had just soft and LPS corals but even the coloring on most of them looked faded. I thought maybe too much light for softies and tried SPS and within weeks color would fade, and growth would stop. Most corals would encrust the plug or attach to the rock during placement then after that nothing.
I tried everything I could think of and nothing seemed to help. Everything would stay alive just would not grow.
Po4,Nitrates always at 0. I am hoping that the Mhs will bring some life back to my tank.

 

well with those parameters why not do sps;D

I have a feeling the spectrum output by leds is still just to narrow.

 

That is what I was thinking as well. I have been running a ULNS for about 8 months now. It has helped color up my corals a bit but still not the color I am after. Plus I would like my corals to grow instead of stay frags forever.

 

Here is my tank under LEDs

 

i like to use leds for supliment lighting bc i realy like the color and the shimmer effect

 

Under Metal Halides. I love the color of the tank now. all of the colors seem to come out more and not as washed out as with the LEDs. I am having a really hard time taking a picture of the tank without it looking really blue. The actual tank color is a crisp white with a hint of blue/purple. The 14k Aquamaxx bulbs look really nice in my opinion. So far I am really happy with the look of my tank now. We will see how the growth goes.

 

I agree,since installing my LEds for actinics my colors seem to really pop..8)