My DIY LED fixture will have 5 years running time come April. Not one LED has burned out to date. No bulb changes for 5 years, that's a relief for the pocket book & the landfill/hassle of proper disposal of fluorescents. No way I would consider going back. Don't find the need to supplement for what I have in the tank either, multi-chip LEDs provide very good coverage & more colour choices are available in LED technology than ever before.

I have an Evergrow IT series 48" light and the fans are pretty much silent. I have had the light fixture for 8 months and no issues with the fans or led clusters.

I have a dilemma what would you do? I have my led units that have done me well for my 90. I built a four foot 120 and want to add another fixture and I have two options. I have another led unit that's 4 foot and really nice it's 220 watts and has 420-460nm bulbs and 10000-20000k or I can use a three bulb t5 fixture with 55 watt bulbs I believe. What other fixture would you use?

Switching back to t5's as LEDs can't truly provide sufficient UV. You can tell that there's no UV sterilizers that uses LED for our hobby. Nor UV tanning salons. That being said. The photons emitted via electricity through gas medium produces a much more even spread. I noticed that my anemones have much better colouration under t5's.

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To be clear I'm still going to use my led but want to add another fixture. Just wondering what I should use for the extra unit. My led have uv bulbs on them

They make LEDs for sterilization and tanning beds so I'm not what your assumptions are based on. It's all fairly new technology so certainly not the most common yet but options are available if you care to look. Most LED fixtures these days also have LEDs that produce light in the UV range so I don't believe there's much advantage using other light sources over LED for the sole purpose of providing more UV.

At any rate I think all lighting options have draw backs. T5 only tanks look amazing in pictures due to the even light distribution but IMO look flat in person and lack contrast. Halides on the other hand go too far in the other direction and lack the ability to evenly light a tank and bring good light and color to all corals and areas. The combination of the two however gives you best of both. LEDs are no different and will lack certain things when used solely, however out of the three they are best on their own IMO, provided you use the right fixture. That said supplementing with T5s will obviously produce better results but often won't be worth the effort for most people.

google ecotech coral lab

I am now running a few T5s along with my leds, true actinic and coral plus for a few hours in the middle of my lighting cycle, getting deeper color from most corals.

Good read! Nice setup for sure.

Thats because UV leds are very expensive. I use 365nm and 220nm UV leds for my business and just the LEDs alone are over 150USD each. Dentists have been using UV LEDS for over a decade and same with the NDT industry.
I dont see the price coming down on them as there is a very limited market for UV LEDS.