When setting up my 90 gallon I had 3 main research points. What skimmer, do I run a fuge, what kind of lighting. I guess I went budget on all those questions. I didn't know if I'd ever get into sps, but wanted a light capable of providing that. Now that I'm mostly LPS and SPS and graduated away from colt corals and mushrooms I'm glad I did.
I had 3 main reasons for going LED with the evergrow it2080. One, I didn't want to deal with changing bulbs. Two, I knew if I just wanted low light coral I could turn my light down. If I wanted sps I could cater to that too. Three, I wanted to cover my 90 gallon with one unit. I felt the AI would have an issue with the centre brace. While my unit does shadow slightly, it's very minimal.
These are my reasons and they may be wrong due to lack of hands on experience with other lighting methods. I just couldn't justify spending well over 1000 dollars on a light at the time when there was a perfectly suitable unit for half that price.
As for results, I'm very happy. Everything is growing, sps, lps and zoas. I will admit that I bought coral online and I don't have quite the coloration that the pictures depicted, but that could be more a me problem than the led unit. I am however going to keep an eye on things/tweak my channels to see If I can get better coloration and possibly add a t5 light to the equation if I don't get the results I want. I should also mention that I don't add any kinds of supplements, just water changes.
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