LED help and questions

[forestal]

Hi all,

I have my 75 gallon (48" long) tank up for just about a year and under 120w LED by tao tronics x 2 (http://www.amazon.com/TaoTronics%C2%AETT-AL01-White-Aquarium-Output-Ratio-/dp/B0058RXPOS/ref=sr_1_2?s=pet-supplies&ie=UTF8&qid=1389800924&sr=1-2&keywords=taotronics+120w+led?)
The tank and corals look great, I have significant growth of my plating monti, stylo and pocilloporas.
these lights have 55 3w bulbs angled at 90 degrees.
I have had a few frags that like stronger light and they aren't doing well (may not be the lighting) and it got to wondering do i need better lighting. I have been trying to read up but it's tough to find objective needs for penetration to depth. I know 3-5w lights are ideal and 90-120 degrees are options. Is spectrum covered by blue and white sufficient vs. other colors matter?

I don't have a budget for top end but if some of these companies doing cheaper led's are actually ok to have on a reef, i would rather stick with them.
One option I would love is programmable lights and moonlighting

thanks in advance

 

[reefer gladness]

Best to eliminate other variables first like water chemistry and water quality before spending more money on lights.

Only way to really tell how much light you have at various depths is with a PAR meter. The Taotronics LED's might use 3-watt LED's but they are under-driven because their units are not very capable at cooling the LED's. Cooling is one area where you definitely get what you pay for with LED's.

White is combination of all colors. But there are warm whites, neutral whites and cool white LED's that vary in the amount of light at given wavelengths (i.e. colors). Cool whites have a lot of blue and little in the green, yellow, red spectrum for example.

The unit you linked is going to be very heavy on the blue end of the spectrum judging from the selection of LED's they used. There are definitely better units available that fill out the light spectrum more but again, I would address any other issues in the tank before considering new lighting.

 

[forestal]

I am not looking to upgrade due to trouble with a few frags, it was more making me think and without a par meter hard to tell - visibly they are great
- good info on the under driving for cooling. The lights are fairly white and color is nice, with blue and white spectrum dimmable
I may just splurge when (?if) I upgrade to a bigger tank and get the good lights with programming

 

[Bearjohnson]

If you are concerned, you could always add a stunner strip or two in order to enhance the overall light quality in the tank.