May be switching to a 175 watt Halide

yes but you can still change out the LED's. You have the reefbreeders value fixture right? just a little soldering and you can have any color combo you want. I'll put it this way. I had 2 x 175 watt MH over my tank and I haven't really looked back. The LED's have brought a lot of color out of my corals that I couldn't get with MH and I have tried just about every bulb there is out there. To be honest, the best bulbs I found were Plusrite 20000k bulbs. 15 bucks per bulb and they lasted about 6 months.

 

What size tank is this on again?

You can achieve great color and growth with led even without going full spectrum.....Thatgrimguy did it for awhile, check out his build prior to adding red, green, and uv diodes to his SOL's to make them full spectrum. I run two sols over a 40B set at roughly 40% total power hanging just under 10 inches above the water.

Now i dont see great growth out of everything but my clam has grown, can say exactly how much in inches but im seeing about 3 new ridges under the mantle. My acros all show some growth, and one has even roughly doubled in size in about 2 months time.

There must be something else going on here, and we need to figure that out. I know you dose, what are your levels at? what are you shooting for?

 

I just can't seem to get those colors. My LFS has great colors, I don't. I have greens, 2 types of blues, 2 types of whites, 2 types of reds, greens and violets already.

 

I have full spectrum right now. The only thing I can think of that would be can issue is phosphate, which I've never tested.I've never had a lick of algae either.

I have a 20 gallon with 900 gph flow.

430 calc, alk. around 3.5-4.1 and mag around 1500-1600. Temp is 78, pH around 8.2, nitrate registers 0. Those numbers have been fairly steady for 5-7 months or do.

Don't really dose unless all. Needs to cone up. Lights stay on for 9 hrs.

 

I agree totally with this as I was using the same set up and bulbs. I made my rapid led fixture close to two years ago and have had great if not better growth and color with my leds. Remember lack of growth and color may not always be due to the light.

 

I see, everything looks good. If you dont have any algae then your phosphates must be low. Maybe even considered a ULNS? If this is the case then you may want to try running lower calcium and ALK.

I bring this up because I had an issue fairly recently where I had a stunt in growth and coraline algae faded away. The problem was that I started to dose very small amounts of vodka to help with Nitrates and Phospates but kept my Calcium and ALK too high (calcium 480ish, and ALK was around 11DKH.

After some research I found that when you have a ULNS system you should keep your levels closer to natural salt water levels. So I stopped dosing and tested again each week till my levels were low and need to go up, I now run Calcium at 410, and ALK at 8. Coraline is coming back, and im guessing my corals will continue to grow again.

Im no expert, and im basically just regurgitating some info here. Just a thought, i could be completely off

 

I remember looking at that monti that was getting good growth. To be honest, I would maybe bump the intensity of the light up just a bit and move upward with it on a weekly basis. There's a guy in the local reef club that has his d120 (your fixture) up to 100% on both channels and is getting great growth. One thing I will mention though, I run my blues about 20% higher than I do my whites just because I like the look. I would bump my blues up a bit, see if there's any reaction from the corals and go from there. I would just hate to see you be handcuffed by a pendant fixture. You are going to spend a ton on bulbs until you find one you like, if you find one you like. Know what I mean?

 

I couldn't agree more. There's so many more variables than light. It really is a newbie question: "what kind of lights are you running". When I see someone's tank that is really kickin it, I start asking one question after another.

 

What is ULNS an acronym for?

 

Yeah, the digitata was doing well but has since stopped growing. Same with everything else, including the red encrusting one. My tank seems to grow in spurts.