which one??

ok so ive been back and forth and cannot decide what to do about lighting for a 20g soon to be reef tank im setting up. i need some input on things first, what would be more efficent just a dual fixture with a 24watt actinic and a 24watt 10000k? or a led fixture (400 lumens) 72x 6500k leds and 6x actinic (78 total leds) with two t5 coral sun actinic bulbs(24watts)? im wanting to keep mainly soft corals, second, a friend told me that the led fixture above could handle soft corals so it kinda through me off, so can someone tell me if it could?

 

in efficient do you mean electricity wise? can you be more specific on your goal? Both will do the same but i believe the 6500k would grow corals faster than the 10k but would look yellowish....according the the spectrum, i have never had a LED fixture so i cant be positive. If it were me, I would go with a 4 bulb T5 setup. I had a aquaticlife that rocked my 1st setup. But again please specify your goals, what you want to grow, SPS,LPS ect and what you mean by efficient. Oh and a price range would help.

 

On a 20g standard tank, the 2x24 T5HO will grow anything you want. FWIW, that's all I have on my 29H.

 

that led fixture sounds odd! 72 6500k and 6 actinics? What's it for?

 

What does he mean by efficient though and also what kind of dual fixture? PC? T5?

 

24w would be 24" T5HO.

As far as efficiency, you're only talking pennies per month between those two units.

 

sounds like a DIY fixture. I havent seen any fixtures with combined LEDs/T5

 

Sounds similar to the Marineland "reef-capable" fixture; only a slight upgrade from their double-bright FO unit.

 

thats just alot of white!

 

How many watts is each LED?