Fluval Flex 15 Lighting

[hewtech]

Hi all,

 

I'm setting up a new nano reef with a Fluval Flex 15. The stock light is pretty average (specs here) so am looking into other options. I was thinking about wiring some 12" TrueLumen Pro LED strip's into the hood (link) as a solution. 

 

Option A)

 

Keep stock (which has a bunch of different colour emitters pretty broad spectrum, roughly 10W)

+ one/two LED bars, either both blue (435nm, 9.1W each) or one blue and one blue/white (435nm and 12,000K white again 9.1W) 

 

Option B)

 

Ditch the stock, and add one/two (maybe three?) LED bars same as above

 

I'm only really looking to grow LPS and Softies (frogspawn, zoa's etc) so don't have super high lighting requirements. I kind of like option B more as I can probably steal the power supply (it's overspecc'd to 25W) and won't leave me with two different light controllers (unless I hack the fluval controller which sounds painful) and can't imagine that the stock light is really doing much at all? 

 

As a side note, my plans for flow is a random flow generator on the outflow pump, any idea what size pump I should be thinking about? stock is ~500L/hr so approx 10x change per hour, I know the RFG will kill the flowrate so maybe something closer to 20x/ph so 1000L/hr? 

 

Cheers

 

Will