Anyone Thinking of Dumping LEDS and going back to Halides

sirreal63 said:
What do you think the degradation % for MH is after 50,000 hours?

You would never run them 50k hours instead you get fresh light output with every change. Turning up your LED's works as long as the spectrum hasn't also degraded or the other components haven't failed. How many Solaris fixtures are still in operation? They were also touted with amazing life but it didn't materialize. Though I am all for the advancement of the technology, I also tend to look at things with a more skeptical point of view. It is easy to hypothesize long life, spectral integrity and the value but at some point reality comes back into it, hence the reference to the Solaris or a first gen AI, it simply did not measure up to the claims. Even though the tech has increased it still has not really stood the test of time, and with the latest and greatest popping up every year and people "upgrading" it is doubtful that many will keep them long enough to ever know.

Hats off to those who are keeping their fixtures for the long haul, they will be the ones who help make the claims substantial, there just aren't very many of those people.
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For one you cannot run them 50,000 hours, they burn out first.
LEDs shift in spectrum is miniscule compared to that of MH bulbs.
I am in it for the long haul out of neccessity. I simply cannot afford to run MH on all of my tanks.
 
sirreal63 said:
I am very energy conscious with my tank, I have spent years in lowering energy consumption without sacrificing the health of the corals.
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You still haven't said how using LEDS would be "sacrificing the health of the corals". My corals have always been healthy and grow just fine. No one is sacrificing the health of corals by using LEDs. You "might" be slightly sacrificing in growth rate..... MIGHT.

If you're dumb enough to kill coral with LEDS, you are dumb enough to kill them with halides and T5's.

For some people the look of Metal Halides are not worth the reduced power bills (both from lower lighting power consumption and reduced need to cool a tank). For a lot, they are.

Those people are in no way sacrificing the health of their livestock.
 
sirreal63 said:
what do you think the degradation % for mh is after 50,000 hours?

you would never run them 50k hours instead you get fresh light output with every change. Turning up your led's works as long as the spectrum hasn't also degraded or the other components haven't failed. How many solaris fixtures are still in operation? They were also touted with amazing life but it didn't materialize. Though i am all for the advancement of the technology, i also tend to look at things with a more skeptical point of view. It is easy to hypothesize long life, spectral integrity and the value but at some point reality comes back into it, hence the reference to the solaris or a first gen ai, it simply did not measure up to the claims. Even though the tech has increased it still has not really stood the test of time, and with the latest and greatest popping up every year and people "upgrading" it is doubtful that many will keep them long enough to ever know.

Hats off to those who are keeping their fixtures for the long haul, they will be the ones who help make the claims substantial, there just aren't very many of those people.
Click to expand...



+1
 
There are no question that the energy consumption question should be high up on the list (not necessarily at the very top) under the assumption that LED fixtures do not harm the livestock if proper care has been taken. That being said, there are of course a whole bunch of criteria on both side why you should select a specific fixture.

There is no question that there are less maintenance with an LED fixture over its lifetime. That was a big selling point to me as I am traveling a lot in work (and personal) and the less maintenance I have to do on my tank the better it will be off. There are already a lot of items that do need attention as is. One component less is a good thing. As someone else mentioned earlier, the power consumption and bulb replacement cost are important to many people today with a bigger uncertainty with jobs etc. than what it has been in the past. Some people want the security of knowing that they at least do not have to replace bulbs every 6-12 month.

From what I have seen you can get just as good of a result with LED lights as with T5 and MH so the capability is definitely there. Think the main issue is that LED may not have turned out to be the "plug and play" solution many think it is. With the right combination of configurations you can get the exact same result as MH and T5 at a lower cost over the lifetime of the fixtures. Where the LED industry still have a lot of work to do is to make them easier to get the results you want without having to constantly tweak and test. It is almost like you have too many options with LED fixtures, most of which are useless from a coral health perspective.

Don't get me wrong, I like the look of T5 and MH combo but I also own Radion Pro second generation and is very happy with them. They provide more than what I (my corals) need in terms of intensity, spectrum etc. in order for them to thrive. For me it is not practical to use anything else as I then would have to run a chiller which I have no space for.
 
Yeah, I'm sure.

"with the MH you refresh the light output and spectrum every year to year and a half with fresh bulbs. Some people cater to their livestock more than to the utility companies."
 
I cater to my coral colors and growth. If I was looking to save money, I wouldn't have a reef tank in the first place.
 
ojonas81 said:
.. For me it is not practical to use anything else as I then would have to run a chiller which I have no space for.
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I have the same issue, as does Michael Palletta

LEDs work. Metal Halides work.
LEDs have advantages and disadvantages. Metal Halides have advantages and disadvantages.
Some people are biased towards LEDs. Some people are biased towards Metal Halides.

Done. Put a fork in it...
 
Fredfish said:
No, I won't.

I'll tell you what I will do. I'll read and research obsessively, post a billion questions about various LEDs. At some point, I'll get sick of asking questions and obsessing, and will actually build an led light that I'll use till it falls apart, blows up, or whatever it is that my leds do at end of life.

It does not matter to me what most people do, I know the advantages of leds work well for the way I do things.

I have to agree with others here that the last video you posted comes out in favour of the Radions. You can't really tell the difference. It seems the guy in the video agrees.

I seem to remember from one of my highschool history courses that people had the same arguments about the horse and buggy vs the car. I can tell you what happened with that one, :deadhorse:

:D
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Fine, YOU will keep your leds till the end of time.
So do you even have LED now?

btw, if you feel you're beating a dead horse, there is no need to keep posting. ;)
 
No where did I say that using LED's was a danger to corals (you inferred that because you wanted to), in fact if you search my posts I have been the one saying that it was proven with the Solaris that LED's can grow corals. It has been known a long time that the corals don't care how they get the light or in what form, they will still grow. I use all 3 techs over my tank, MH, VHO and LED.

I managed to lower my energy consumption long ago (it has nothing to do with LED's) by simply changing how I chose equipment. I replaced all of the high wattage pumps with low wattage pumps, which enabled the chiller to go into a closet, I replaced the 250 watt bulbs with 150's, replaced numerous flow devices with low wattage Tunze's and just this year replaced two 150 watt bulbs with a single 250. I would gain nothing by going to LED's and would probably use more electricity if I did.
 
MedRed said:
I cater to my coral colors and growth. If I was looking to save money, I wouldn't have a reef tank in the first place.
Click to expand...

If I was a young single man I would run MHs.
I am not. Reefkeeping is my hobby, not my life.
LEDs are a way to make everybody happy, including my corals.
 
By the way some posters have represented LEDs you would think that they did not exist prior to their introduction to the aquarium industry.

The concept was first demonstrated in a lab in 1907, over 100 years ago. The first commercial LEDs were produced 52 years ago in 1962. The first high brightness LEDs were produced for the fiber optic industry in 1972.

LEDs may be new to the commercial lighting industry, but they have been around a long time. Long enough to establish credible MTBF numbers and to determine things like rate of decay and spectral shift.

Of course, that does not stop some manufacturers from driving their LEDs at or beyond their proper operating specifications. :)
 
To be honest if they would mass produce a 453nm CFL bulb, I would switch to those and 6500Ks and save even more money.
I love the shimmer of MH and LEDs, that is why I never went with T5s but.......
 
d2mini said:
ok, so just for the record, you've never had LED but you're a fan and you prefer them over mh or t5.
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Also for the record, I have eyes, a brain and feet and have been using them successfully and for a very long time to figure things out and get things done. I used them this time to figure out that I don't like the look of T5. I used them to take a look at a lot of different LED installations and talk to people who have been running them for a while.

I know from past experience that, in my situation, MH will not work.

Its amazing what you can accomplish with so little innit?. :D
 
Fredfish said:
Also for the record, I have eyes, a brain and feet and have been using them successfully and for a very long time to figure things out and get things done. I used them this time to figure out that I don't like the look of T5. I used them to take a look at a lot of different LED installations and talk to people who have been running them for a while.

I know from past experience that, in my situation, MH will not work.

Its amazing what you can accomplish with so little innit?. :D
Click to expand...

Agreed.
And it's also amazing what happens once they are actually over your tank, as those who have long term personal experience with all lighting systems can tell you.

Well, at least I know how to interpret your posts now.
Thanks for that bit of info.
 
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