Rapid led or the kessil LED?

I'm going with the Kessil 150, but I can't tell you how I like, because I don't have it yet, tank is still cycling /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default//emoticons/smile.gif

 

I have used rapidLED a lot for my projects and helping others with their's. Mike has always been good to me and service has been great plus they are a club sponsor. I went with 12 RB and 12 cool white. If I could do it again I would do natural white instead I like those much better. I am getting ready to add a green and a red to my bio cube and maybe a violet and pink just to cover more spectrum for the corals will see how it goes. Corals are doing just fine with my 12 and 12 combo even had a clam in it doing well until I moved him in to my 220. I have to keep them dimmed to about 60-70% max or stuff starts to burn but overall things seemed to be happy. Even had an Acro doing well under them.

 

I have 2 10k Kessil pendants over my 40 breeder and really like them. The 10's look more like a 12-14k to me.

 

Going to be more of a RBTA clownfish tank. I can't complain, and either are my BTA's. I would recommend them.

 

Rapid give you more bang for your buck. But the tough part is choosing the colors. I've read many choose warm white to get more red spectrum instead of an actual red led. You could do 10 rb 8cw 2ww and 2 magenta 2 cyan. That's about as full as it gets

 

I am going to be making the big switch to LED soon and I am curious of the cost difference between DIY and simply buying the AI modules.

 

yeah I would think so but all the numbers i come up with show about the same,

 

My par readings taken on a 40 breeder. Lights were 4" from the surface. I have 14" from water level top to sand bed. 820+ was just below water level. Mid tank i got 240-260 and at the sand bed I got 90-100. All readings were directly under the light. Readings were done with a Apogee meter. My BTA's has stayed in place since the switch from T-5's at about mid tank. A few sps frags that I had where placed near the top, but several started to bleach. They were moved mid-tank. A few still look like crap but I'm hoping for the best. I have 3 acan frags on the bottom doing well along with a small frogspawn, leather coral and galaxy coral.

 

I am more than happy with rapid led. I didn't go with the kit, I did my own retrofit as part of a group buy on RC. I went with 24 bulbs, 12 coolw white, 12 royal blue on two separate dimmable drivers. I have my blues at 70% and white at 40%. 95% SPS and crazy growth in my BC29 with kalk topoff. I would take pictures but it really just looks blue/purple and, quite frankly, terrible. All I have is an iPhone for picture taking though. If you are ever in Ames and I am around you are welcome to come see the tank, if you wish. As I said, I am very happy with my setup and wouldn't change a thing, personally.

 

I'll post details about my LED build. I ordered all my stuff from rapid. I will say it was a lot of work, and those dessil LED's look pretty sweet. But I'm very happy with all the different channels and capability my diy rapid led + APEX offers me.

I have 4 10.08x16" heat sinks. Each heat sink has three channels #1 (24 RB LED's in parallel) #2 (4 Blue, 2 Red, 2 Green, 4 RB), #3 (12XPG cool whites). This amounts to about a 2 blue to 1 white ratio.

I have a friend who is going to bring over an apogee par meter one of these days and I'll let you guys know what types of readings I'm getting. Visually it looks like the same amount of light as the 250 mh's I was running (and I only have the LED's at ~80%) but colors ARE FREAKING AMAZING!!!! Instantly I've began to see colors that I've never seen before in corals that I've had for years! Growth is a guarentee if you have a mh and the PAR of that = PAR from LED's, you're going to get growth.

 

The more you buy, the cheaper they get. My setup cost me about $125, and that is with EVERYTHING included. RapidLED does giant discounts and giant bulk buys. I think my most expensive part was the driver at $18 if I recall correctly. The individual LEDs were something like $1.25 and $2.00. I think the whites were cheaper, not sure why.

 

My project each light cost me ~500 bucks. So you figure I have 48 LED's per fixture which is 2x what AI's have, then you gotta figure I've done pretty well.

 

I also used Rapid and like them