My Chinese 120W LED's Review thread! Lowered the lights, post #192

Would one of these fixtures be good enough for my tank. I've been looking into lighting and so far the taotronics seem like a great deal. My tank is 36" wide and 24" deep with a glass top.

 

I or 2 depending on if you have an sps dominant tank or not.

 

I do'nt have any right now, just starting out but I would like to get a few sps down the road. It will be mostly fish with some softies

 

You would be okay with one, just keep sps towards the middle, and softies on the edge.

 

Thank you anenome

 

ordered 2 of the dimmable units with internal timers. they shipped today now to figure out how to hang them over a 92G corner bow......

 

Looks like I see a few familiar names here. I've tested many types of chinese fixtures, as well as built my own DIY, and can condense 180+ pages of info from another forum into one post.

Do not go with fixtures that just have cool white:royal blue, or aren't dimmable. Colors do not appear as well as fixtures with multiple color whites, violets, or reds. I have seen this firsthand.

Not all chinese companies leds or bins are created the same. One light using the supposed same leds from one company, was much brighter than the other fixture that I paid more for.

You can customize these lights however you'd like dealing with the chinese companies direct, which is really cool.

My favorite ratio so far is 2:1 royal blue to white. Use Cool White, Neutral Whites, and Warm Whites, or just CW and WW. Add around 4 420nm violets per 24" of length. Any other violet besides 420nm, like UV at 400, won't provide the same effect. Add in around 2-4 reds for extra color pop. Green and Cyan are subjective, and I don't feel they add much. Use 2-4 of those as well if you desire.

If the lights are in a canopy or very close to the water (under 5") no optics are needed unless your tank is deeper than 24". Use 90 degree optics if you want to hang the lights higher, especially over an open tank, or light will shoot out all over the room.

Buy in bulk. You get a better price if you do.

Here are a list of good companies for these types of lights:

Reefbreeders (found here actually) reefbreeders.com

Evergrow (my personal favorite, great lights and customer service)
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Wow,

I'm the OP, and thanks for the input.

I agree that my non dimmable TaoTronics LEDs have too much white. It's almost a 1:1 ratio at 30:25 whites to blues.

However, my DT still looks really nice, and all my corals SPS, LPS, and softs are all thriving!

 

I basically had a Taotronics myself at first. You're right, they do look good, and will grow thriving coral.

Eventually though, you'll end up seeing a led fixture with some warm whites, reds and violets, and you'll have a "now I see what I've been missing" moment. It happened to me, so enjoy the fixture as much as you can before this happens. lol

 

You might be able to run a strip or two with the additional colors and get the look you want without purchasing another fixture.