LED lights for a 48" tall tank

[wakesetter]

I am looking at installing a 48" tall reef system and would like to use LED lighting. I would only be putting low light corals on the bottom (leathers, colts, gsp, etc) and bubbles etc in the middle to tip end, maybe a few montis etc up high. Any suggestions for which LED's if any to use for such a setup. The tank will be a custom glass bow tank. One of a kind, with a 72" tightly curved front surface, 30" front to back and a 60" rear panel. Should be pretty interesting. I am willing to use 4-5 LED fixtures to get the spread that I need. what are your thoughts?

[goby1kenobi]

Even metal halides are going to have some challenges penetrating a water column that high. LEDs may not cut it. See if you can find Sanjay's graphs of PAR at depths -- I remember seeing you get _very_ low PAR at more than 24" depth. Optics may help, but maybe not enough.

[drew930]

goby1kenobi is exactly right. MH have a hard time. Anything will have a hard time penetrating high depths of water.. LEDs may not cut it at all, unless you have a ton of them. But if your only doing low light coral then it might be a different story.

[ganjero]

At that depth you need 1000w Metal Halides

[insomniac2k2]

IMO, at this point in the game LED lights with VERY tight optics would be your only choice. I hadnt seen a use to go to something like XM-L led's yet, but this would definitely be it! XM-L's with 20 optics would be a beast for penetration. You could cover the flashlighting effect with XM-L's w/o optics on the same array.

MH's would be very expensive and prodeuce a ton of heat for this type of application.