Well ok, I guess that is why the solaris was such a colossal flop.....
The Solaris was a colossal flop because it was poorly engineered, had very poor build quality, and the vendor went out of business before they had a chance at a "revision 2." It had
absolutely ZERO to do with the fact that there were LEDs in the fixture. There are plenty of examples of vendors selling T5 products, or MH products, that are garbage. That doesn't mean that T5 or MH are bad technologies, or inappropriate for reef aquariums.
It ain't about watts, it is about known rather than unknown, proven rather than experimental infancy. ALL LIGHT DISSIPATES AS HEAT. In that context it is ALL wasted. Whether it is 100 watts of T whatever or 50 watts of LED, it is all heat. You can't have a percentage increase in "waste heat" It is 100% for any lighting technology. Informed thermal management can keep it from impacting your system.
According to that argument, why not just switch to incandescent lamps?
There is clear, repeatable evidence that to light a given tank to a level suitable to grow a given population of corals, an LED rig can be built to consume fewer watts than a T5 or MH rig to get the same result on the same tank. Argue all you want about what each watt gets turned into, this is still true, in the same sense that, generally speaking, the T5 rig for said tank will consume fewer watts than the MH rig.
And yeah that 4 cylinder engine is totally inadequate for that 5 ton dump truck. I imagine a 12 cylinder diesel would work well however. It ain't about the gas mileage, it is about getting the job done.
Let's not confuse properties of a given technology with properties of a given design. LEDs can be designed to work for any tank system, or if the design is poor, they can fail to be adequate for any tank. It's poor logic to assume that a given technology is only appropriate for a given scale of implementation, especially with LEDs, which are easily the most flexible lighting technology used for reef aquariums.
I have not seen leds getting the job done--yet.
You must not be looking very hard.
wow that really changed my mind s of yet with LED lighting. I was thinking the same in the performance level of the LED compared to t-5 halide combo
Make up your own mind, but please, don't base it on misleading information (from either side of the argument).
LED technology is indeed in it's infancy, and it's still progressing both in the sense that manufacturers are improving on the raw parts every day, and application of those parts to reef lighting fixtures is changing on a regular basis. But there ARE plenty of examples of proven, long-term tanks using LED lighting - you just have to spend some time looking. Of course, there are many examples of failed LED tanks. But to be fair, there are PLENTY of examples of failed T5 and MH tanks.
LEDs are especially appropriate to large tanks, IMHO, because of the inherent flexibility. If you need lots of light at the bottom of a tall tank, LEDs can work well, given the selection of optics - an advantage over other lighting technologies, where the reflectors available are generally not sold in multiple "widths" of beam angle. This is besides the clear potential for longterm savings in both money and electricity consumption.
But, hey, in the end, it's your tank, and you have to do something you are comfortable with. If you're still interested in LEDs, take a read through the many LED build threads on this forum, especially the mother-thread:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1678127
Start at the end of that thread and work your way backwards, there have been a few recent "summary" posts that give a basic walkthrough of applying LEDs to reef aquariums. Also, check out this thread:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1718642
Especially Soundwave's posts in it, which show coral growth progression shots on his 75g, over roughly a year long period.
