What LEDs do I need for a 55 gallon tank?
What LEDs do I need for a 55 gallon tank?
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Adam Brown The basic rule of thumb to do a reef tank LED setup is about 18 square inches of surface area per CREE XT-E LED (base colors)
For a basic 55 gallon tank which is 48x12x21 (LxWxH). This gives us 576 square inches of surface area (LxW). Divide that by how much surface area we want per CREE XT-E LED(18) we 32 LEDs.
BASE COLORS:
For base colors we recommend Royal Blue and Neutral White at a ratio of 2:1 (Royal Blue to Neutral White)
Since our calculation above got us 32 LEDs at a ratio of 2:1 we need 21 Royal Blue and 11 Neutral White CREE XT-E LEDs (or just 11 of our custom 3UP stars using the 2:1 ratio or RB to NW)
Thats all! This gives you the base colors you will need that will give you a great overall color and excellent growth.
FULL SPECTRUM:
If you wanted to do a high end Full Spectrum build you can also add the following to the base colors:
We recommend a 6:3:3:1 ratio of Royal Blue to Neutral White to Hyper Violet to Ocean Coral White
In our example we already have the 21 Royal Blue and 11 Neutral White CREE XT-E LEDs, all we need to add is 8 Hyper Violet and 6 Ocean Coral White to get to our recommend ratio.
A good layout for this setup is two of the following:
2x Royal Blue 1x Neutral White 3UP Star
Hyper Violet
Ocean Coral White
Powering the LEDs
Powering LEDs is very straight forward. Have a look at this article on how to power the LEDs above:
http://ledgroupbuy.zendesk.com/entries/25177163-What-do-I-need-to-power-the-LEDs-
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