Life After T5's From an Acro Growers Perspective...

[dball711]

I made a decision to switch from a T5/LED mix to exclusively LED's for my tank(s) lighting. I primarily focus my coral growing efforts on Acropora, with a huge effort on deriving color by tweaking various parameters and settings. I was on the fence about going all LED but decided I liked the ability to control light color/spectrum. After considerable research I settled on the new Radion Gen5/BLUE as my choice for the main lights. I supplemented the main lights by adding some cheap 470nm LED strip lights in my frag tank and Orphek OR3 Reef Aquarium LED strips in my display tank.

It's been a few months and I wanted to share my results thus far. Here are some quick crapy iPhone pics I took this AM while doing a water change, so far I'm sold on going all LED...no more replacing t5 bulbs every 10 months or so...

TSA Fruity Pebbles


SC Orange Passion




TSA Dan Akroyd


CC Voodoo Majik


CB Candella Milli


CB Flaming Unicorn


ASD Rainbow Milli


Walt Disney


OZ


CB Maleficent

 

[saltlife]

All under RadionG5/Blue only?

 

[sharktopus_prime]

OMG, now Dave posts this RIGHT after I placed an order for my Hybrid T5/LED fixture!

Sent from my SM-F900U1 using Tapatalk

 

[dball711]

Yes, I supplemented the Radons by adding some cheap 470nm LED strip lights in my frag tank and Orphek OR3 Reef Aquarium LED strips in my display tank. The pictures above are from. the display tank so the Radion's are supplemented by the Orphek LED strips.

 

[spike]

Love the orange passion, lots of growth

 

[dball711]

Love the orange passion, lots of growth

Thats the piece I got from you! Also had a couple of accidental frags from it as I was moving into its final spot on my reef. one of my favourites.

 

[Adam]

Damn you @dball711 You going to kill my bank account!

 

[jcook54]

Thanks for the update, seriously good stuff.

 

[saltlife]

Thanks for sharing.

 

[ricky5415]

Looking good Dave. Now I know where to go get my sps frags in the future

 

[Dmitri]

Awesome pictures Dave, thanks for sharing!

 

[stevethao]

Any pics of the full tank? Also, any reason why you went with Radion g5 with or3 supplements over just Orphek Atlantik v4’s?

 

[dball711]

I'll have to get a new FTS with just LED's. I went with Radion G5 BLUE, I don't use any White so anything with whites seemed like a waste. Buying 2 Atlantic V4's was $2200, 4 radon x15" were $1680 and they were mostly blue LEDs. I had enough left overbuy the Orphek OR3 strip lights so all that made it a no brainer for me.

 

[urbanknight]

OK....That's it! I'm stripping my tank of all sticks and bringing them to put in your tank! Looking great as usual Dave!

 

[dball711]

@stevethao hers some FTS.

Dispaly 80g AIO


Frag Tank 60g AIO

 

[stevethao]

@stevethao hers some FTS.

Dispaly 80g AIO
View attachment 26489

Frag Tank 60g AIO
View attachment 26490

WOW! You grow those beast acros in AIO’s? Looks great!

 

[dball711]

Homemade AIO's, it's my own design I came up with back in the late 1980's.

 

[Cook]

You make growing acro's look so easy! I'm glad the switch is working out well for you. My experience with LED only wasn't as positive, but I am not an expert acro grower with a mature stable system and I wasn't supplementing with the 470nm light bars like you are. My display tank with hybrid T5/LED combo was outperforming my frag tank that was LED only and using the Coral AB+ spectrum, so I went hybrid there as well.