Anyone Thinking of Dumping LEDS and going back to Halides

Michigan Mike said:
BTW ...
end rant... Haha

Sorry guys, long winded post, huh?
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I agree Mike. I had kinda looked into LED (Mostly for the MH heat issue), it isn't for me yet. This thread is really informative and alot of it is just really funny! I have read the whole thing. I think the funniest thing I read was when it was suggested that if you want to kill the entire LED industry, just put something in your marketing that says after about a year your corals wil adjust!!! Hysterical. They make corals look good though, my LFS just changed over to LED in the DT just to get the pop. I can't see the benefit other than that though.
 
And MedRed's ATO failure after the Radions (if timetable is correct & I'm still aware of things at almost 4am (ha) there would be setbacks when stuff like that happens, although it looks like everything made it through the event.

I love your tank, but it looks too small (well cube-ish, not small) to have multiple (3) light sources & multiple halides over it, I think the halide/t5ho was really nice myself although I can tell the pics aren't exact its what I would do. Ha! I'm such a halide/t5 snob..!
;)
 
Michigan Mike said:
And MedRed's ATO failure after the Radions (if timetable is correct & I'm still aware of things at almost 4am (ha) there would be setbacks when stuff like that happens, although it looks like everything made it through the event.

I love your tank, but it looks too small (well cube-ish, not small) to have multiple (3) light sources & multiple halides over it, I think the halide/t5ho was really nice myself although I can tell the pics aren't exact its what I would do. Ha! I'm such a halide/t5 snob..!
;)
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The ATO failure occurred after all of these pics were taken.

because of my tall spires, I was going to have to use a high wattage halide within a massive reflector to get all sides of each spire lit, or go with separate light sources. I already owned the fixtures, so I went that route. I was worried 400w on a 60 gallon plus LEDs was going to be too much light. I had nothing to fear as even the LPS and softies weren't phased. It was the best decision for the long run, but I do miss my giesemann infiniti. It's the best fixture I've ever owned.
 
MedRed said:
The ATO failure occurred after all of these pics were taken.

because of my tall spires, I was going to have to use a high wattage halide within a massive reflector to get all sides of each spire lit, or go with separate light sources. I already owned the fixtures, so I went that route. I was worried 400w on a 60 gallon plus LEDs was going to be too much light. I had nothing to fear as even the LPS and softies weren't phased. It was the best decision for the long run, but I do miss my giesemann infiniti. It's the best fixture I've ever owned.
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Gotcha (i thought Dec in your pics), i guess multiple lights help fill out the SPS better with eay ess shadowing,
it was a neat experiment. Thanks for sharing, the pics are great & your tank is wonderful looking. Bravo! ;)
 
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nynick said:
The Sol Nano is 30ish watts when tuned to max if I remember right so that might be why. Led might give more bang per watt but not enough to compare 30w with 250w.
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Don't compare watts it does not work like that, compare par

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2
 
I think the best way to prove that one is better then the other is to have a couple tanks set up running on the same sump so they have the same water same environment except for the lighting. Take frags from same colony put one in each tank at same depth and run one with one set up of MH and the other with one led set up. Let it go for 6 months then swap the light and let it go for another 6 months. See what your growth and color differences are between them. Then switch to another version of MH and LED set up and do the same thing. Eventually you will see what makes for best growth and color. It may be MH or it just maybe LEDs, but to say I ran LEDs and switched to MH and had better growth with the MH doesn't prove that they are better. It proves that style MH may be better then that style LEDs on your set up. Also could just be the fact that your tank and coral finally matured and hit its major growth point when you switched. I'm willing to bet that A good led spectrum set up and a good MH set up will have pretty close to the same growth.
 
jdezek said:
I think the best way to prove that one is better then the other is to have a couple tanks set up running on the same sump so they have the same water same environment except for the lighting. Take frags from same colony put one in each tank at same depth and run one with one set up of MH and the other with one led set up. Let it go for 6 months then swap the light and let it go for another 6 months. See what your growth and color differences are between them. Then switch to another version of MH and LED set up and do the same thing. Eventually you will see what makes for best growth and color. It may be MH or it just maybe LEDs, but to say I ran LEDs and switched to MH and had better growth with the MH doesn't prove that they are better. It proves that style MH may be better then that style LEDs on your set up. Also could just be the fact that your tank and coral finally matured and hit its major growth point when you switched. I'm willing to bet that A good led spectrum set up and a good MH set up will have pretty close to the same growth.
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You ask you shall receive.

http://www.vividaquariums.com/aquariumLightExperiment.asp

They have been running the best halides against the best led on the same 800 gallon aquarium. I think it has been about a year now. They say they both work but allot of people that have been to the store say the halide side is slightly better and the color of the light looks better. The interesting thing will be when the colonies get bigger will we see the self shading issue.
 
I honestly can not see why one would be better than the other when it comes to coral growth and coloration. You can get the enough of light and at least somewhat the same spectrum from led, mh and T5.

The only reason I went LED is all the little extras that really has nothing to do with my livestock. It does run much cooler, are often more compact and you do not need to change bulbs. All the energy savings turned out to be a couple of bucks a month, if that, since the heater eats it all up.

I really thinks it boils down to just one issue. Do you have a lot of time and the interest to do do your homework before shopping then led might be for you. There sure is a lot of garbage to sort out. If not go MH or T5 since there are very defined, true and tested, industry standards for both.
 
Well there's a lot of garbage MH and T5 out there as well, but people are conveniently forgetting that, and then there's a lot of guff spouted about spectra when the reality is that T5 have a spiky spectra full of holes and yet they still seem to work. So I'd be tempted to agree with the above.
I'm hoping to get my LED fixtures back in action iminently (they went on a LONG trip to Germany to get new fans and got lost in the post first time round) and will take down my MH and put them back in the cupboard again. I like them (Lumenbrites, 400W Radiums, Coralvue ballasts) but the heat is a pain and they're no better i.m.o.
 
MedRed said:
I just added new bulbs this week and was going to do new par measurements this weekend. The Nano's Par numbers were 100-150 off of the 250w Phoenix running on an electronic ballast.



I started my tank with 2 AI Sols. I changed the optics to all 70º to improve coverage. I loved everything about them, but my coral colors were off.

I switched to Radions a year later. I got better growth, coloration, and coverage, but coloration still wasn't what I was expecting. SPS weren't showing 100% of their potential.

I decided to switch to MH and began the search for a fixture. I found one and while I waited for it to come in I used an old Aqua Medic 250w pendant for a couple of weeks. The first few days I used a 10,000K bulb that was ugly yellow. Even then I could see some of the colors I was missing by using LEDs. My 14,000K Phoenix bulb arrived and really brought out a lot of the overall pop my tank had been missing.

A little less than a week later my Giesemann Infiniti arrived with a 250w halide + 4 T5's. That fixture was the bees knees. I found the right mix of T5's pretty quickly. Coral coloration improved in less than a month to meet my expectations. The unexpected bonus was that growth took off like a light. I was satisfied with the growth before the halide. I had no idea that the halide would create such a growth spurt. As the corals grew I started to run into problems with my scape. The centralized Halide was unable to get light to the far sides of the tall spires which really limited where I could place new SPS frags and created shade and shadows on existing ones.

I was originally going to go with 3 x 150w MH pendants and place one over each spire. I decided to go with 1 x250w and 1x150w for the back two spires. This would provide 360 coverage around those spires for full SPS placement. The front spire has SPS on it, but the very front of it is zoas only. I decided I'd go with 2 x T5 or with an AI Nano to light it. The Nano won out as I really missed the Sol's control ability and lunar cycle (my candy basslets spawn late at night and I was able to catch it from time to time with the lunar lights).

Now I have a Frankenstein lighting setup that allows me the coral fluorescing dusk viewing of 10% blue Leds and a true lunar cycle without compromising on the daytime benefits of halides.


Keep in mind the Sol Blues and Radions were fixtures without the latest spectrum LEDs and obviously did not have any UV leds at all.
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Wow I have been reading your thread.. Wow around page 29 when you added the halide with t-5 a few pages later when you showed your sps, Wow what a change in coloration from the radions. Growth seemed a little better under the radion but its hard to really tell.

The radians seemed to give the corals more pop from fluorescence but they got more true color from halides.. I am really thinking a halide with blue leds would be the best of both worlds, pop and real color.
 
shred5 said:
Wow I have been reading your thread.. Wow around page 29 when you added the halide with t-5 a few pages later when you showed your sps, Wow what a change in coloration from the radions. Growth seemed a little better under the radion but its hard to really tell.

The radians seemed to give the corals more pop from fluorescence but they got more true color from halides.. I am really thinking a halide with blue leds would be the best of both worlds, pop and real color.
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Growth was definitely better under halides than under the Radions. In the 16 days between 3.10 and 3.26 you can see big growth spurts in my Strawberry Shortcake, Joe the Coral, Miami Orchid, and Hawkins Echinata. I think some corals look better under LED, but the amount of corals that don't look 100% is a personal turn off. At this point, I have no future plans to ever run LEDs as anything other than supplemental lighting for features I can't get in Halides or T5s (like ramping for sunrise/sunset and lunar cycles).
 
MedRed said:
Growth was definitely better under halides than under the Radions. In the 16 days between 3.10 and 3.26 you can see big growth spurts in my Strawberry Shortcake, Joe the Coral, Miami Orchid, and Hawkins Echinata. I think some corals look better under LED, but the amount of corals that don't look 100% is a personal turn off. At this point, I have no future plans to ever run LEDs as anything other than supplemental lighting for features I can't get in Halides or T5s (like ramping for sunrise/sunset and lunar cycles).
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To me 16 days is not enough really to tell anything about growth, it takes longer to adjust to the light. Corals go through growth spurts too. When they are frags they spend most of their time laying down a solid base and then one day they explode. I am just saying it takes longer. Colors can changes a little more quickly. Don't get me wrong you have a beautiful tank, actually an awsume tank, but you change things pretty often, so it makes it really hard to tell what actually makes a difference. I mean you changed your lighting 3 times in a pretty short period. To me success in the reef hobby is measured in years.
 
wayne in norway said:
Well there's a lot of garbage MH and T5 out there as well, but people are conveniently forgetting that, and then there's a lot of guff spouted about spectra when the reality is that T5 have a spiky spectra full of holes and yet they still seem to work. So I'd be tempted to agree with the above.
I'm hoping to get my LED fixtures back in action iminently (they went on a LONG trip to Germany to get new fans and got lost in the post first time round) and will take down my MH and put them back in the cupboard again. I like them (Lumenbrites, 400W Radiums, Coralvue ballasts) but the heat is a pain and they're no better i.m.o.
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That is bull Most of the people in the know say that leds work.They provide enough par, are more efficient, and produce less heat.. Of coarse there are some trolls trying to stir the pot. There are bad fixtures for led, halide, t-5 or what ever so what.. I think the point is being made is halides give better coloration and some people feel better growth for sps. There is give and take and everything comes at a cost. What I think is the two people that come to troll are the only ones you guys can point to after how many post in this thread. You never point out the ones that actually say something. Oh look about 15 pages back this guy says leds are crap and cant work, oh look he has no proof and then ignore the rest of the posts. I have seen how many post on how great leds are but no pictures or no proof either. I want to see shots that are more than a year old too, not weeks or even months.

I agree t-5 has holes, but it is what I mainly use right now. Why because it is in between halides and led right now. It more energy efficient than halides but not as much as leds. They do not have the full spectrum as halides but they are still better than leds in color. I think that the big thing with t-5 is the pop form actinic that t-5 misses and that is what leds do best. I feel that since halides lighting has not improved with t-5 or led, what has improved is efficiency. I have not used halides in may 8 to 10 years. I saw some leds lighted tanks last night, they all have been added recently though but the actual color of the light I liked allot on some and others I hated.

A couple of weeks ago I saw the coralife led fixture for the first time, The light it produced really caught my eye, it was fantastic crisp white. This tank was a 120 that has had halides on it for years. There is a crispa in there that is 2 feet wide I am not kidding you. Problem was the halides bulbs where probably not replaced in years and this crispa was also standing two feet tall reaching for the light which they are not supposed to do. Under the led it was back down like it should be and it is regaining its color. Anyway it was really pleasing light to the eyes. Weird thing is it uses a amber led which I have never seen before.
 
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shred5 said:
To me 16 days is not enough really to tell anything about growth, it takes longer to adjust to the light. Corals go through growth spurts too. When they are frags they spend most of their time laying down a solid base and then one day they explode. I am just saying it takes longer. Colors can changes a little more quickly. Don't get me wrong you have a beautiful tank, actually an awsume tank, but you change things pretty often, so it makes it really hard to tell what actually makes a difference. I mean you changed your lighting 3 times in a pretty short period. To me success in the reef hobby is measured in years.
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16 days was just the interval between the pictures. I'd been under MH for 33 days at that point. The corals were under LEDs for 1 year and 3 months. Within a month of MH things just went nuts. The changes in growth and coloration were in direct correlation to changes in lighting. Things got better everytime I changed lighting and significantly better very quickly when I changed to MH.
 
My consumption, and therefore growth, almost doubled immediately when I switched from LEDs to MH, although I think adding more LED fixtures would've caused the same jump. I didn't expect it to be so dramatic though.
 
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