Suggestion/general help

So I have been looking at getting back into reef aquariums and I am really interested in using led lights. That being said I think I have asked way to many people for advice. The LFS says leds will not provide enough light no matter what, which I know is wrong, and my dad who is a electrical engineer and district sales manager for the state of IN for a large lighting company way over complicated the idea for me.

So the tank set up will be a 56 gallon column that will be 30 inches wide, 18 inches deep and 24 inches in height, from the sand bed it will be more like 22 inches. So the answer I am looking for is how many leds will there need to be to achieve proper light at that depth and what combination of colors would you recommend? Also how would you place this over the aquarium? I live in an apartment so doing a ceiling hang kit isn't really in the cards.

I am thinking the following would be somewhere close (from rapidled)
6x20 heat sink/60x25mm fan
10 royal blue
10 cool white
4 neutral white
2 cyan
1 constant driver( the reason for constant is I work midnights and it will be ran on a timer)

 

You want a 2 to 1 ratio of blue to white. So you will need more blue

Personally I would use 8 Cool, 2 warm and add 4 reg blue and 4 violet

 

It seems like to little for such a deep tank. Should I add more leds since I plan on having corals? I rather have to much then not enough.

 

What driver are you planning on using for all those? I personally wouldn't do that as the whites and blues will have different max drive currents, the whites are prob 1300-1500mA depending on which ones and the blues 1000 mA i believe and the cyan 700mA.

And yeah, thats way too much white.

I'd do more like the 36 led system which is OVERKILL but ya can grow anything ya want ever;
24 blue and cyan(14 rb, 6 blue and 4 cyan)
12 white(9 cw and 3 nw)

if you're def not doing any high light stuff ya can def do the 24 led system.

And I'd highly rec getting dimmable so you can control the look of your tank real easy. Couple that with boostled.com typhoon controller and ya have a timer, sunrise and sunset, and very easy tweaking of anything ya want.

If you're on a budget, look into aquastyleonline.com, but UPGRADE TO THE MEANWELL DRIVERS!

HTH