this seems to be my experience as well. I need almost the same wattage and massive coverage with leds before i was accepting of the tech.
i went with some other leds that would have supposedly worked, but they were awful. very little growth over a year of use.
i run my blues 100% and whites 75% with my black boxes and obtain 1175 par (from the meter). i do miss the shimmer effect of halides though.
its interesting that black boxes seem to be a common success with hobbiests. although, ive heard the mars aquas are hit and miss.
Kessils have allot of shimmer, they also have a peak under 400nm for UV, that is why I chose them. Still the self shading is pretty bad.
Leds are getting better for sure since the last time I tried them.. I thought they were really close now so again I gave them another chance. I knew colors in sps would lack some but hey a little loss in color isnt to bad with all the other advantages of leds. I think frag tanks are a good place for leds because there is very little shading on frags. I really like the Kessils it just I feel like I need to double the amount of fixtures or even more. At this point there is no energy savings and the price of that amount of fixture is outrageous.
Honestly though my lps look better than ever under the Kessils it is just my sps and mainly the undersides.
We are starting to see some really nice sps aquariums with large colonies with leds but again they have allot of fixtures.
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