Anyone Thinking of Dumping LEDS and going back to Halides

[mhucasey]

I don't really think you have much to add to the conversation either so your proposal will work out great for both of us. It's like trying to have a conversation around a 12yr old with a chip on his shoulder.

Mhucasey: You say your color exploded when you switched to T5 from LED. Were you using LEDs you could control the color blend on or were they one color like the Kessils? Just curious if maybe the T5's are providing a more flattering color blend.

I started with two Canon 100W pendants, one Blue and one White, individually controllable though my Apex. They were missing green, red and UV, so I added two LEDtric 18W par 38 bulbs.

The color was pretty flat before adding the PAR 38 bulbs, and there was better reflective color after adding them. I initially went to T5s thinking that their biggest advantage would be just showing reflective colors better and eliminating shadowing.

About a week later there were unmistakable color shifts in many of the tank inhabitants, Acroporas "blued" up a lot, Purple Stylo changed from a pale brown purple to a deep rich purple, Rose bubble tip anemone took on mother of pearl flourescing colors in it and got a lot bigger, etc...

2 days before Changing to T5s:

Just over a month Later:

Granulosa color progression:
Using LED Oct 22 2012:

After T5 switch on Dec 1:
Jan 2 2013:

Jan 23 2013:

Millepora nov 23 2012 to mar 2 2013:

Millepora now:

Tricolor nov 29 2012 to mar 3 2013

 

[Aqualund]

Since Proline has agreed to make my Illumina fully functional or replace it,
when I get it back from them I will give it a few weeks (If I don't fall immediately in love with the way my tank looks under my old halide system) to make sure the LEDs are the reason for my decline in coralline algae and stunted coral growth.
If it is my admitted lack of husbandry that was the cause I will keep the Illumina. I really don't like the thought of going back to 1200 + watts spinning my electric meter for 12 hours a day if I can achieve the look and growth I want with LEDs.
If it is in fact the LEDs causing the problem the Illumina will have to go.

Hey man, this is from the heart...if you are hoping for the illumina to achieve the same results as MH for your SPS, you're really going to be dissapointed. Of course unless I'm reading wrong...but from what I read about these units is that they have 7k whites with 450 and 470nm blues.

This is just not enough variety of wavelengths to come close to what a MH can do....for SPS. If you're just doing LPS and softies you'll be more than fine.

But just a heads up from someone that has run through, used, and is currently using every form of lighting on my 5k gallon coral facility.

When I've sat there with white and blues for a year and watched a millipora do barely anything for a year...and then put it under a full spectrum led unit and have it grow .5 inches in 2 weeks...and then grow like a weed with a MH/T5 combo...it changes my perspective on what is needed quite a bit.

 

[Fredfish]

...
When I've sat there with white and blues for a year and watched a millipora do barely anything for a year...and then put it under a full spectrum led unit and have it grow .5 inches in 2 weeks...and then grow like a weed with a MH/T5 combo...it changes my perspective on what is needed quite a bit.

Is this under the Lumia chip?

 

[Aqualund]

Nah I had this with my diy build months ago, but the lumia just compressed the footprint of the leds and made it more efficient.

 

[Uncle Salty 05]

Hey man, this is from the heart...if you are hoping for the illumina to achieve the same results as MH for your SPS, you're really going to be dissapointed. Of course unless I'm reading wrong...but from what I read about these units is that they have 7k whites with 450 and 470nm blues.

This is just not enough variety of wavelengths to come close to what a MH can do....for SPS. If you're just doing LPS and softies you'll be more than fine.

But just a heads up from someone that has run through, used, and is currently using every form of lighting on my 5k gallon coral facility.

When I've sat there with white and blues for a year and watched a millipora do barely anything for a year...and then put it under a full spectrum led unit and have it grow .5 inches in 2 weeks...and then grow like a weed with a MH/T5 combo...it changes my perspective on what is needed quite a bit.

Thank you Aqaulund, I appreciate the straight talk from a guy that knows.
I can get other colors for the Illumina with multi-color modules @ $190 each and I would need at least three of them so that's another $600 on top of the $2700 I already spent.
I guess I need to find a FOWLR guy or somebody that can appreciate the Illumina for what it is, rudimentary LED lighting.

 

[Fredfish]

Thanks. Aqualund.

 

[Tangaroa]

I'm sorry but I don't accept that you can't achieve colour and growth with a vertex illumina. LEDs, as a new technology, has a greater number of inexperienced reef keepers. Virtually nobody starts a reef tank with halides anymore, therefore a greater percentage of experienced refers have proven technology. The lights cost a lot of money and are often the first thing that is blamed when these new reef-keepers can't achieve a tank full of colourful SPS.

If you give a tank a good even spread of LEDs at the correct intensity and wavelength then the corals simply don't care whether that light photon comes from the sun, a t5 tube, a diode or out of the backside of a camel. Your corals don't pine for a halide light to bake them cookies or need to be tucked into bed and read a bed side story by a t5 fixture.

People need to accept that some people have better tanks because either

A) you made a poor choice buying inferior led lighting, or
B) you're too busy playing with the myriad of features to stop and see how your tank is reacting to your constant fiddling about, or
C) others are better reef keepers than you

The phrase a poor workman blames his tools has never been more appropriate.....


In Uncle Salty's case it appears that unfortunately his unit hasn't been working properly. Hopefully once the unit has been repaired or replaced his experience will turn into a positive one and he can put his extensive experience and knowledge into producing a knock out tank.

 

[rtparty]

Virtually nobody starts a reef tank with halides anymore

Any proof of this? I hear people say this all the time and yet nobody can actually back it up with any facts.

The facts out there say otherwise. Vendors I have spoken with have said halide sales are at an ALL TIME high and they've sold more now than ever. This would suggest that somebody, somewhere is starting a tank with them.

I am sincerely curious. Not trying to be argumentative.

 

[Aqualund]

I'm sorry but I don't accept that you can't achieve colour and growth with a vertex illumina. LEDs, as a new technology, has a greater number of inexperienced reef keepers. Virtually nobody starts a reef tank with halides anymore, therefore a greater percentage of experienced refers have proven technology. The lights cost a lot of money and are often the first thing that is blamed when these new reef-keepers can't achieve a tank full of colourful SPS.

If you give a tank a good even spread of LEDs at the correct intensity and wavelength then the corals simply don't care whether that light photon comes from the sun, a t5 tube, a diode or out of the backside of a camel. Your corals don't pine for a halide light to bake them cookies or need to be tucked into bed and read a bed side story by a t5 fixture.

People need to accept that some people have better tanks because either

A) you made a poor choice buying inferior led lighting, or
B) you're too busy playing with the myriad of features to stop and see how your tank is reacting to your constant fiddling about, or
C) others are better reef keepers than you

The phrase a poor workman blames his tools has never been more appropriate.....


In Uncle Salty's case it appears that unfortunately his unit hasn't been working properly. Hopefully once the unit has been repaired or replaced his experience will turn into a positive one and he can put his extensive experience and knowledge into producing a knock out tank.

Then go ahead, run one, and see for yourself. Do this with say...a yellow tort and a rainbow milli and see if an exclusively royal blue/ warm white combo will yield the correct coloration. Your yellow tort will be green...and your milli will grow slow and have no PE...there will also be no rainbow.

Like I said, I have no doubts this light will do well for LPS and Sofites and yield very colorful corals. But when you use this light on very delicate sps corals, all other variables being equal...you will not achieve the same results as a full spectrum unit or a MH combo.

This is not my opinion...this is the very basis of this thread, and the very experience of thousands of reefers. Whether you want to "accept" that or not is up to you.

If you have proof to the contrary...please provide it, as soon as we have something like that, this question can finally be laid to rest. It has been my quest for the past two years, and only recently have I been close enough to start taking valid data...but this is a result of led advancements that came out well after salty's illumina was released.

 

[Magickiwi]

Virtually nobody starts a reef tank with halides anymore

Uh yeah, I'm not with you on this one. I started a reef with a MH/T5 combo light. I'd still be using that fixture if I could live with the features it doesn't have and I could get past replacing three 250w bulbs in the last six months.

If anything I would say that statement would be more true of T5 only fixtures than of MH fixtures.

 

[Uncle Salty 05]

I'm sorry but I don't accept that you can't achieve colour and growth with a vertex illumina. LEDs, as a new technology, has a greater number of inexperienced reef keepers. Virtually nobody starts a reef tank with halides anymore, therefore a greater percentage of experienced refers have proven technology. The lights cost a lot of money and are often the first thing that is blamed when these new reef-keepers can't achieve a tank full of colourful SPS.

If you give a tank a good even spread of LEDs at the correct intensity and wavelength then the corals simply don't care whether that light photon comes from the sun, a t5 tube, a diode or out of the backside of a camel. Your corals don't pine for a halide light to bake them cookies or need to be tucked into bed and read a bed side story by a t5 fixture.

People need to accept that some people have better tanks because either

A) you made a poor choice buying inferior led lighting, or
B) you're too busy playing with the myriad of features to stop and see how your tank is reacting to your constant fiddling about, or
C) others are better reef keepers than you

The phrase a poor workman blames his tools has never been more appropriate.....


In Uncle Salty's case it appears that unfortunately his unit hasn't been working properly. Hopefully once the unit has been repaired or replaced his experience will turn into a positive one and he can put his extensive experience and knowledge into producing a knock out tank.

Do you want to buy it when I get it back?
If not, why not?

 

[Tangaroa]

Any proof of this? I hear people say this all the time and yet nobody can actually back it up with any facts.

The facts out there say otherwise. Vendors I have spoken with have said halide sales are at an ALL TIME high and they've sold more now than ever. This would suggest that somebody, somewhere is starting a tank with them.

I am sincerely curious. Not trying to be argumentative.

Perhaps it's more of a truism in the UK where people pay through the nose for our electricity than it is for the US?

In the UK, when people come into the hobby they buy LEDs. They see the results that that more experienced reef keepers are achieving with legacy technology and then blame the lights.

I will start a thread in the major uk based forum to see what ratio of the different types of lighting the sponsors sell.

Then go ahead, run one, and see for yourself. Do this with say...a yellow tort and a rainbow milli and see if an exclusively royal blue/ warm white combo will yield the correct coloration. Your yellow tort will be green...and your milli will grow slow and have no PE...there will also be no rainbow.

Like I said, I have no doubts this light will do well for LPS and Sofites and yield very colorful corals. But when you use this light on very delicate sps corals, all other variables being equal...you will not achieve the same results as a full spectrum unit or a MH combo.

This is not my opinion...this is the very basis of this thread, and the very experience of thousands of reefers. Whether you want to "accept" that or not is up to you.

If you have proof to the contrary...please provide it, as soon as we have something like that, this question can finally be laid to rest. It has been my quest for the past two years, and only recently have I been close enough to start taking valid data...but this is a result of led advancements that came out well after salty's illumina was released.

Uh yeah, I'm not with you on this one. I started a reef with a MH/T5 combo light. I'd still be using that fixture if I could live with the features it doesn't have and I could get past replacing three 250w bulbs in the last six months.

If anything I would say that statement would be more true of T5 only fixtures than of MH fixtures.

I do run one. I have had one over my tank for the last 17 months. It is a 6 foot SR360 supplemented by 4 additional red pads and 3 additional uv pads.

Does it stand up to comparison with the best Halide or T5 tanks?

No, but then I wouldn't claim to be the best reef keeper. The light does it's job, any failings in the tank are my own.

Feel free to pop into the largest uk forum's TOTM for Jan 2014 to see what my tank looks like. I keep and grow multiple milliporas, echinata, and have stag colonies that have certainly thrived. I don't blame any problems with acans on the light, just some poor livestock choices.

After all, none of us are perfect, right?

 

[Tangaroa]

Do you want to buy it when I get it back?
If not, why not?

I've just bought a second one. :beer:

 

[sirreal63]

So far just this year I have had at least 10 people PM me for advice on starting a tank with MH. It is something I enjoy doing, helping people get the best they can for their tank. I even advised a few that is was certainly ok to go with LEDs.

 

[DaveMorris]

I am an experienced reef keeper that completely screws up this question…I am just finishing up a 130g build and my lighting will consist of two 150w Phoenix 14,000K halides supplemented by a DIY LED setup consisting of 29 each 10,000k daylight Luxeon 3w LEDs and Royal blue Luxeon 3w LEDs, with 6 Ultra Violet UV LEDs for that "glow". I chose to supplement with LEDs so I didn't have to keep buying replacement T5 lamps.

As a professional in the theatrical staging industry, I have been fascinated by the advent of LED lighting in the aquarium industry over the years. 90% of what I see going into LED fixtures now is fluff. LEDs with color spectrum that never even makes it through the 20' to 30' of water our corals come from is just one example. All of the storm feature stuff is another one. I am still waiting for the research that proves corals and fish benefit from lightening. Its irritating to look at as well.

In my humble opinion, the biggest benefit that a metal halide fixture has over LED is that the spectrum is much wider in a halide lamp. LEDs are too pinpointed and narrow to the spectrum it was designed to produce. Unless you have about 20 or 30 different spectrums of LEDs in a fixture, it is too narrow to come very close to natural light. It is very difficult to make a natural looking beam of light out of an array of only 3 or 4 colors. In the staging business an example of this is the fact that we still don't have an LED fixture that looks good on a person's skin or under a video camera. LEDs are just too narrow to look very natural. I know that theatrical fixtures and aquarium fixtures are very different, but the problems with the two are very similar.

Bottom line for me is that I just hate the look of tanks lit exclusively with LED fixtures. I can tell just by looking at them and it doesn't look right to me. My personal preference leans towards halides. So I am one of the guys starting out a new tank with metal halides.

 

[Tangaroa]

This isn't a look at my tank thread, and as I said above, there are many many better tanks out there.

Not the best picture, it's a bit blue (one of the genuine problems with led lit tanks is that they don't photograph very well) but you can hardly call this a FOWLR tank either.

 

[Tangaroa]

I am one of the guys starting out a new tank with metal halides.

I see the confusion here Dave (nice surname btw). What I meant was that hardly any new reef keepers start their first tank with halides anymore.

 

[Aqualund]

4 additional red pads and 3 additional uv pads.

Then there we go. You should have modified your statement to read "I'm sorry but I don't accept that you can't achieve colour and growth with a vertex illumina without the supplemental uv and red pads installed."

Indirectly you have proven my point.

 

[Tangaroa]

Then there we go. You should have modified your statement to read "I'm sorry but I don't accept that you can't achieve colour and growth with a vertex illumina without the supplemental uv and red pads installed."

Indirectly you have proven my point.

Point taken, but I went on to say

If you give a tank a good even spread of LEDs at the correct intensity and wavelength then the corals simply don't care whether that light photon comes from .......

I would recommend to Salty that he asks for some free or heavily discounted additional pads for his obvious inconvenience. I don't know if my tank reaches the standard that he previously enjoyed with his MH but it would be a shame if his experience puts others off the vertex solution.

 

[Fredfish]

...Not the best picture, it's a bit blue (one of the genuine problems with led lit tanks is that they don't photograph very well) but you can hardly call this a FOWLR tank either.

Nice tank Tagaroa. This picture is a lot different than the totm pics, which to me look unaturally dark and oversaturated.

This thread seems to be about a bunch of people with blinders on talking past each other. Seriously folks, take a little peek 'outside the box'. The view is pretty good... and all the other boxes are full of purdy fish 'n stuff.