A good question- what wattage do you run?

[Clown79]

A common question many people have with leds that there isn't much info available is what wattage to run.

 

What wattage are you running on your nano's?

 

On my lagoon I have a prime and a prime HD. Both are at 21 watts.

[growsomething]

On my nuvo 10, 18 watt nemolight.  No idea yet how the coral will grow, seems underpowered.  2 sps at the top, softies and macro throughout.  No macro growth yet, and no nuisance algae, but no fish bioload either. 

[Clown79]

1 hour ago, growsomething said:

On my nuvo 10, 18 watt nemolight.  No idea yet how the coral will grow, seems underpowered.  2 sps at the top, softies and macro throughout.  No macro growth yet, and no nuisance algae, but no fish bioload either. 

I used that light on my 10g nuvo.

 

I had some growth with certain corals. Birdsnest didn't do very well nor did stylo.

 

Acans were great, duncans were good, my hammers lost colour and didn't grow. 

Leather grew very well. 

 

My dragon soul favia had minimal growth. I had to put it in shade, in direct light it does poorly(under any light).

[growsomething]

Thanks clown 79, I should have asked for nemo light/nuvo 10 experience before I bought coral.  I have superman monti and silvereye leptoseris within a few inches of the top.  The wife likes leathers and I like acans, good to hear your thoughts on those.

[5*Chris]

42w on my 29g, everything from the GHA to birdnests growing great

[billygoat]

I'm running my Kessil A160 at 50% power (~20 watts), and it's been more than enough for the gorgonians and soft corals in my 18 gallon tank. Seems to grow certain macroalgae quite well too. 

 

This thread brings up an interesting trend though: it seems that many of us have fairly strong lights that we're running at less-than-maximum power. I personally chose my light because the increased intensity allowed me to mount it higher over the waterline, which increased the spread of the light and made it easier to work in the tank. I'd be interested to hear other people's reasoning on the lights they chose too.

[A.m.P]

My contest tank has the 12W Tuna Blue over its' 9 or so gallons, and my 20 long has the Maxspect running at around 50W. The trend with LED's seems to be that two-watts per-gallon or so of quality-lenses and LED's capable of penetrating deep into the water seems to be enough to grow most corals (even most SPS). Proper-positioning with spotlight or poor-coverage seems to work fine too, especially in shallow-systems.
Or at least that's the trend which came to mind after browsing far too many R2R threads over the last few weeks lol.

This should be a fun thread to watch, maybe you could do a shortcut-poll asking what people's equipment is actually running at per-gallon?

[Clown79]

I decided to start the thread because online, it's a frequent question with no real concrete answer

 

With fluorescent and halides you knew how many watts pers gallon but with LED's, wattage is different from the above mentioned lighting.

 

With all the multitude of light settings, the one thing really not discussed is how many watts.