i like new toys lol, all seriousness i found the hydras were not cutting it for sps.... they look awesome and do great on lps,softie and zoas. in fact my zoas were growing extremely well. I had to run the hydras dialed way down,whites never exceeded 20% because stuff would bleach. My tank is still young and water params are not perfect IMO yet to make life easy for the animals in my tank (corals) so by using t5 that we all know work this gives things a chance to actually grow. My colors are coming back and new pieces look great. I thought i could go just softie,lps,zoa but the sticks keep calling me lol. I was able to grow sps and keep it colored up well in my 55g with t5 so i figure i would go back to it.
I feel that when running led fixtures this removes any margins for error in water quality as the lighting is far different than what corals are used to. If everything was perfect and coral were doing extremely well than maybe a switch to led would be ok. Im not going back at least not until t5 gets phased out because something else is better. I don't think that will happen....
I'm sure this light is putting out mor par then the five hydras were. In the pic of the Zoa garden u can see a green rock nem, he seems more light sensitive then the others cause as soon as these lights came on full blast he was quick to relocate under that shady spot he's in now. Also my tube nem hardly opens during the day now, it would be open all day and night under the hydras. I'm excited to see the diffrence on the comming months. I'm also wondering if the better overall spectrum will curb my algea growth.
