Anyone Thinking of Dumping LEDS and going back to Halides

bernie lyons said:
Well, what conclusion do I draw from this ??? Would I go and buy these so-called "perfect led's" ??? As like any scientific study,it's always prudent to wait and see what happens in a couple of years and then study -via "eyes" what the tank looks like by then..assuming ofcourse nothing dies by then .
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You got beat. Now suck it up and move on. You were provided pics of corals growing rapidly under LED, yet still decide to doubt him? And then make some random speculations about how his corals will die in two years?
Seriously, 2 months of growth won't lead to eventual death. Many people keep coral long term under leds, including a couple TOTMs.
 
corals

corals

Aqualund said:
The conclusion you should draw is that regardless of what you think, these corals, have been alive in my tank for 3 years, and have color and growth. that is the only conclusion you need to have. What you do with that information is up to you, but I would prefer you not deter new users from being interested in leds because of false idea that leds can not provide these things (color, growth, health).
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Perhaps you should do away with your arrogance ! As far as "concluding" what I should think by you...,well 3 years of a little bit of grouth and color "hardly" makes for drawing a definitive conclusion here ! I have as I am sure several other hobbiests have gotten greater growth and better color pigmentation(maybe it's your lousy shots possibly) under metal halides in under 3 years my friend...Sooo where what do we go from here ???
I am glad to know that you are happy with the results but let's not go off the deep end here...
Sanjays beautiful tank is still being lit by metal halides by the way...
 
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what?

what?

asid61 said:
You got beat. Now suck it up and move on. You were provided pics of corals growing rapidly under LED, yet still decide to doubt him? And then make some random speculations about how his corals will die in two years?
Seriously, 2 months of growth won't lead to eventual death. Many people keep coral long term under leds, including a couple TOTMs.
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corals growing rapidly ??????? I don't see ANY rapid growth ??? where do you get that from ???
 
Aqualund said:
thax med. And those pictures are from when i used to think ecorays were awesome. I was so naive. here are some pictures I literally just took with my crappy canon powershot. no photoshop involved. Granted, they dont look like sanjay's but I'm working on it! Colors are definitely not crap like everyone says leds are for sps.


If you want, I can literally post a video of taking the pictures and posting them to imgur if you still do not believe me lol.
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healthy corals, mediocre color for top down shots. It'd be evil of me to post top downs with my old canon powershot.
 
Aqualund said:
Im using chinese leds. at $1-$2 an led. Not that im saying that is better than any other...it's just what i am using right now. Mostly because of ease of ordering and how easy it is to install and swap lenses.

Besides that, even if I went with all cree leds, it would still cost less money to light my tank than a metal halide, now that the meanwell ldd drivers are easy to get and cheap.

I have 100 3w leds over my 110, but run them anywhere from 40-60% at any given time, with 16 ldd drivers. so even though i have the capacity to run 300w of lighting, its probably much more like 180-200w. maybe even less because of ramping. right there, that was about $250. after all the wiring and arduino controller random stuff and making it look pretty, probably close to $350-$400. give or take $25.

but im probably low balling a bit...i bet the little things like solder and screws would add up if i looked at it closer.
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You could get 2x 250w MH retro fits off ebay for $320 and all you would have to do is plug them in. No glue, solder, heat sink, controller, and risk of blowing them out. The thing that gets me is that so much is still changing with them that people are buying a new unit after having their old one a year and calling it out dated. I'm sure some day i will go back to a tank with them, but Ill wait till all the guess work is out of it.
 
Now hold on there, I never said that my tank was an example to beat all hetal halide tanks in growth, or coloration.

Additionally, there are many other parameters that affect coloration, and I admit to have parameters that are outside the optimum to get very intense coloration. I have simply stated I have success, and leds can provide these things, contrary to what you all say.

And as for growth, I got the two larger colonies shown as frags smaller than my pinky nail from the bottom of a rubbermaid container at my LFS. I have also fragged these several times. On top of that, I also moved my entire setup within the last 8 months.

I didnt take a front view because as you know the colors get washed unless you have some sort of filter. they would all just be bright white from the light on them.

It is easy to see that you people will not accept that LEDs can provide colorful healthy sps coral.

lol maybe its my lousy shots? its exactly what you asked for...a raw no photoshop picture that looks real. that is exactly what you got. Im not a photographer. And yet your brain still cannot accept this information.
 
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Aqualund, Nice shots, i known that leds can Grown sps, but the real problem ia about colors, I known only one guy that hás trully beatiful colors under leds and This guy can get colors even with t8 bulbs lol
 
jinks said:
You could get 2x 250w MH retro fits off ebay for $320 and all you would have to do is plug them in. No glue, solder, heat sink, controller, and risk of blowing them out. The thing that gets me is that so much is still changing with them that people are buying a new unit after having their old one a year and calling it out dated. I'm sure some day i will go back to a tank with them, but Ill wait till all the guess work is out of it.
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I run MH/T5 on my frag tank and LED's on my DT.... I have gone through more money in bulbs in 2 years on my frag tank then I paid for my LED set up on my DT... and have yet to change a thing on my DT.... I love the MH/T5 color and love the do nothing approach to my LED's... those people that replace things once a week are just that way. Don't blame it on the tech. They are the same people who bought blue ray players at $1500 when a year later they were $99. or stand in line every time apple puts out a new product...
 
One of the things that also needs to be done is to put some MH above the tank of corals grown with LEDs to see what the color looks like. You can take LEDs, change the reds, or greens and get all kinds of diff colors in one setting. If you grow them at a set LED color, then get the perceived color, we then need to put halides over them to see what the color changes to.
 
Color rendition will always be better under MH or T5 than under current LEDs. Still the LEDs will show you a nicer phosphorescence of some corals regardless if true or bad rendition so why bother revealing under halides?
 
I was at a place that uses both MH and LED's this weekend. They have roughly 60k gallons of corals, live rock etc. No matter what lights they were under the corals loved them, even just a blue spectrum some corals were doing amazing and the colors just popped right out of everything.

My belief is that it really depends on your tank, how you dose, your setup etc on what works best. No one product is perfect in every situation.
 
boxorocks said:
One of the things that also needs to be done is to put some MH above the tank of corals grown with LEDs to see what the color looks like. You can take LEDs, change the reds, or greens and get all kinds of diff colors in one setting. If you grow them at a set LED color, then get the perceived color, we then need to put halides over them to see what the color changes to.
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I grew my tank for over a year under LEDs (sol blues and raidions) from very small frags. When I switched to MH, the color exploded.
 
MedRed said:
I grew my tank for over a year under LEDs (sol blues and raidions) from very small frags. When I switched to MH, the color exploded.
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This is my story except for I went back to T5s. I saw growth under LEDs but color was terrible no matter what I tried.
 
I used T5s over my first tank, and LED over my new rimless nano.

The LED sure takes a lot more work attempting to come up with the correct settings and I'm actually throwing much more blue + royal blue as primary light sources.

However, coloration has been great and growth has been pretty spectacular on Acans, Duncans, Ricordea and my (small) single Acro. I wouldn't say it's better, but it's not been a nightmare or given me a reason to think about switching.
 
I have the Mitras 6200 HV LED and it is a fantastic fixture. I still am not seeing my Acros color up like they should for whatever reason. I just ordered a Hamilton Cayman Sun 400W MH with the 14k bulb.

I want to put that over my cube for a bit and see if my corals color up any.
 
HurricaneSystem said:
I have the Mitras 6200 HV LED and it is a fantastic fixture. I still am not seeing my Acros color up like they should for whatever reason. I just ordered a Hamilton Cayman Sun 400W MH with the 14k bulb.

I want to put that over my cube for a bit and see if my corals color up any.
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I switched from a Sol to a Cayman Sun 250W and I'm really happy I did. Sure I miss the programming and not having to think about heat but the growth took off after switching. Not saying I'll never go back to LED because the Radion Pro is kinda calling my name. But it's hard to argue with the results from MH.
 
HurricaneSystem said:
I have the Mitras 6200 HV LED and it is a fantastic fixture. I still am not seeing my Acros color up like they should for whatever reason. I just ordered a Hamilton Cayman Sun 400W MH with the 14k bulb.

I want to put that over my cube for a bit and see if my corals color up any.
Click to expand...

:facepalm:

Keep chasing!
 
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