Lighting watts per gallon

[cvrle1]

When it comes to LEDs. majority of them will grow coral just the same, as long as they are 3W LEDs. That is the most important part of LED fixtures. There are some fixtures out there, like Current USA Orbit that use only 0.5W LEDs, which are only good for fish only tanks, or really, really, really low light needing corals and shallow tanks.

In terms of 3W LED fixtures, there are many options out there, at many different prices. As mentioned, they will all grow corals just the same, different cost comes with all the extra features that you want your unit to have. Units like Mars Aqua and Viparspectra, which are quite popular are Chinese Black Boxes. They are very basic, as they only have 2 channel control and Viparspectra has a timer. That is it, no other features. Then you have units like Ocean Revive T247 which are nicer looking, and have mounting brackets (still only 2 channels) Then you go to something like Reefbreaders V2+, which are even nicer looking and have a lot more features. 6 channels, sunrise/sunset, WiFi control and so on. And finally you have top of the line Radions, AI, Kessil and so on, which have all the bells and whistles you can think of.

In the end it really comes down to what features are a must have for you. I decided that I dont need 6 channels, WiFi and all the extra gadgets, so I went with 2 Bloomspect 165W fixtures. They are almost identical to Viparspectra I mentioned above, but have 2 UV LEDs as well. I will use 2 of these over my 120G 4x2x2. That should give me more than enough light to keep whatever I decide to. The way I saw it is: 2 Bloomspect units cost <$200, 3 Radions or AI would be over $1K. Pretty easy decision for me.

There are also hybrid units with T5s as mentioned by Frogger, however I didnt want to deal with T5's as they need to be replaced 12-18 months.