which kit to buy...?

[pkirby]

I am going to upgrade my 29 gallon biocube to LED lighting. This tank is primarily lps and soft corals and will likely stay this way. I have another, larger tank that I'm going to keep most of my sps corals.

I feel confident that the 12 led kits that you offer would both work out great for me, but I don't know which to buy. I'd like to know the major difference between the two.

I'm looking at this 12 LED Ultra Premium DIY kit with dimmable drivers: http://www.rapidled.com/servlet/the-59/12-Ultra-Premium-LED/Detail

as well as this premium kit, which is the more expensive of the two:
http://www.rapidled.com/servlet/the-36/12-Premium-LED-DIY/Detail

Any feedback is appreciated. Also, I assume I'd want the wider optics for these since my tank isn't particularly deep? Would you agree with this assumption?

Thanks.

[Rapid LED]

Hi there,

The "ultra premium" kit comes with XP- series LEDs, which are newer, brighter, and more efficient. The price is misleading because the cheaper kit is actually the "better" product so that's the one I'd go with.

Are you putting the lights in your existing hood? If so, don't use lenses (the lights are too close to the water, you'll get bad spotlighting if you do). If they aren't in your hood then you'll want the widest lens possible because as you mentioned the tank isn't very deep/tall.

Also, I have the same tank but I'm running 20 LEDs so I'm worried that 12 won't be enough. Do you have any SPS/clams/hard corals?

[pkirby]

Thank you for the reply.

I do plan on keeping the stock hood... so thank you for mentioning that I probably don't want to use optics...

The more I thought about it the more I thought I may need more than just 12... I was thinking 18 may be more in line, but 20 would make it easy (4 rows of 5 or something...)

I currently have a couple sps corals that are growing under the stock CF lighting. Those corals are planned to be moved soon over to my 75 gallon reef that's using t5ho. The more I think about this the more I think I probably aught to make the tank capable of growing anything instead of limiting myself...

Do you happen to have any pictures of your setup? I'd love to see how you went about positioning the LED's and the combination of blue vs white led's, as well as what you used for the heat sink, etc...

thanks again.

[pkirby]

nevermind. I see there is another post specific to the biocube 29 where the list of what to buy, etc... has been laid out. Thanks again.