Anyone Thinking of Dumping LEDS and going back to Halides

Can you guys please go start another "moonlight" thread (of which there are many if you do a search) and keep this thread on topic?
Thank you.
 
kevin_austin said:
I installed my first moonlights 15 years ago. A 6 watt PC actinic bulb that I got from... can you guess where I got it? It was a popular retrofit provider back in the day. Since then I've used may different approaches to moonlight.

The point of moonlight is not to view everything in the tank. Search for "too much moonlight" and "The need to breathe." If you can see everything in your tank, your moonlights are too bright.

As for not showing my tank, you are engaging in another logical fallacy (which you seem to be good at). I'll let you figure out which one it is.

I think most people will agree with me on the too much light for moonlight issue. Also, those that have seen it will agree about providing LED royal blue viewing (or actinic viewing in general). So, put a cogent argument together or :debi:

p.s. What would someone do who wanted to remain anonymous and noticed an old account they had cast off from 2002?
Click to expand...

You are once again ignoring his T5's. One T5 bulb can be used for actinic viewing. There is nothing special or magical he's going to get from adding LEDS for 2 hours and more than likely, the zoas will be closing at the end of the light cycle anyway. Everything else will be open. And everything that will fluoresce will do so under moonlighting. Your suggestion is silly. I never suggested too much light for moonlight. You keep putting arguments together that are complete tangents. We aren't even arguing about the same thing as you keep injecting random things like "keeping polyps open" and "too much moonlighting." Either dimmable LEDs and no moonlights. Or moonlights and no LEDs. It's very simple.
 
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MedRed, he is just here to troll threads, look at his recent posts in other threads, don't feed him any more.
 
All is well. got a new skimmer. Hopefully it will be show worthy again by the end of the year. And now back to our regularly scheduled LED conversation!
 
Photosynthetic Efficiencies of LEDs: Results of Short Term Exposure to LED Lights

The radiometric power of a photon matters not in photosynthesis - a blue photon (with high radiometric power) will drive photosynthesis just as well as a photon of lesser energy (say, a red photon.) So, it would seem that the issue is settled. It is not. The adage 'a photon is a photon' is true when discussing light production by various light sources, but it is not correct when considering how different light wavelengths (or bandwidths) promote photosynthesis.
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JPMagyar said:
Light produced from an LED is NOT the same as light produced from metal halide or fluorescent lighting. We know precious little about how symbiodinium differ in their reactions to light from LED sources as few if any scientific papers have yet to be written on the subject.

Most light we are familiar with comes from hot gases or hot pieces of metal that give off "excited" photons. The spectrum produced is broad in nature as the photons have many different wavelengths. That spectrum is not identical to the spectrum of sunlight, but it is broad in nature.

LEDs are Light Emitting Diodes. They use a microscopic "junction" called a PN junction. These "junctions" have a "band gap" or "forward energy gap". That "gap" determines the wavelength of the photon produced and does not change. LEDs by their nature produce photons of almost identical wavelength. LEDs do not produce a broad spectrum of wavelengths. In addition most dimming of LED light is done with Pulse Width Modulation. What that means is that the LED sends out a burst of maximum intensity for a fraction of a second and then turns completely off and the frequency at which that occurs determines the "brightness" of the LED. So imagine a fire hydrant that turns on for 1 second versus a sprinkler that runs for an hour. We don't know if symbiodinium react to the on/off fire hose the same as it does to a continuously running sprinkler.

Light is highly complex and comes in many many forms. It is a wave and it is a particle. It can be visible and it can be invisible. It can promote photosynthesis or it can kill living cells. The point is LED light is NOT the same as metal halide light and we have little knowledge on how light from LEDs may or may not change the way symbiodinium react. Many advanced reefers have a LOT of experience in seeing real world differences in the way corals react to different light sources.

In the end this is a hobby and you should enjoy the light you prefer. I have tried LED and prefer metal halide.
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I left out another major difference . . .

LED light is directional. If you hold a basic light bulb above your head aside from telling the world you may have a great idea, that light bulb will broadcast light in all directions around you. LED light is directional like the beam of a flashlight. So much so that it creates "glitter lines" even at low intensity. The difference becomes more pronounced when you start to combine bulbs with reflectors. It is much more difficult to "surround" your corals with light when using most modern LED fixtures as compared to "surrounding" your corals with light when you use pairs of metal halide bulbs in good reflectors or groups of bulbs using good T5 reflectors. This above all else seems to impact coral growth as the shaded areas in LED lit tanks quickly become apparent when compared to the more even results seen in metal halide tanks. Some of the best lit LED tanks are overcoming this problem by adding far more LEDs in total than the first fixtures had. Some even begin to approach the wattage of traditional light sources in their endeavors to even out light distribution.

In any case directionality is another way that LED light differs from metal halide or fluorescent lighting.
 
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Mmiller40gt said:
+1. Everyone is claiming these huge savings and I just can't get the math to add up. I been doing cost management and software development for 12 years and the math still eludes me. Who has kept a led fixture for over 2 years? People are upgrading to the latest and greatest every year. still searching to replace something that already works great.

I spend more in salt than any predicted savings. This is not a cheap hobby. If 20$ a month makes or breaks you you might consider goldfish.
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You can try the math on this...

Tiered electricity... 11c per kWh tier 1 17c tier 2 and 33c tier 3...

LEDs moved me from lots of tier 3 back in to tier 2.

My tank is a 210g so I run 3 reef breeders 120w values instead of 3 250w hallids and a chiller.

I had halides for 2 months and got $280 bills. Now it is consistently $170.. Cali sucks for heat and power cost so I am sure that is where the numbers come from.

By the way I love my leds. Maybe not as good as halides, but at least I can afford to keep the tank...
 
What happens to any light source when it passes through water? Specifically water that is not stagnant like this:

ge3upedu.jpg


Would this disrupt the directionality of the light?

I'm running LEDs on a 7g nano and I feel as though I have enough light to surround the corals. It seems that when I program the LEDs at a higher intensity level the shadows begin to disappear. Just my experience, nothing scientific.
 
Fredfish said:
Or did you mean that you can pick up a bulb from multiple vendors that will

Can you set up an led system that can grow corals with the same colouration as MH? Unless Powerboat Jim is fibbing, we are there now.
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MedRed said:
Powerboat Jim is the definitive answer on nothing at the moment.
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Fred, we have been there for some time.

I Don't know why it cant be accepted that its possible for LEDs to rival MH. You are right, I have no definitive answers on anything. Im just passing along info from my experience just like every one else. I am confused as to why my experiences are so readily discounted.

If people don't want see or hear stories about a certain piece of equipment that tends to go against the theme of a thread please say so.I will refrain from posting of any further results since it wont be definitive enough for the sake of this discussion.
 
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kevin_austin said:
I installed my first moonlights 15 years ago. A 6 watt PC actinic bulb that I got from... can you guess where I got it? It was a popular retrofit provider back in the day. Since then I've used may different approaches to moonlight.

The point of moonlight is not to view everything in the tank. Search for "too much moonlight" and "The need to breathe." If you can see everything in your tank, your moonlights are too bright.

As for not showing my tank, you are engaging in another logical fallacy (which you seem to be good at). I'll let you figure out which one it is.

I think most people will agree with me on the too much light for moonlight issue. Also, those that have seen it will agree about providing LED royal blue viewing (or actinic viewing in general). So, put a cogent argument together or :debi:

p.s. What would someone do who wanted to remain anonymous and noticed an old account they had cast off from 2002?
Click to expand...


I agree moonlight should not be making coral fluoresce at night.. Corals need darkness.. moon lighting should not be direct either and I prefer to do it indirectly by bouncing it off a reflector.. Moon lighting should be a soft glow.. It is not so we can see the tank at night.. It also should not be blue, temp of moon light is around 4100k...
 
shred5 said:
I agree moonlight should not be making coral fluoresce at night.. Corals need darkness.. moon lighting should not be direct either and I prefer to do it indirectly by bouncing it off a reflector.. Moon lighting should be a soft glow.. It is not so we can see the tank at night.. It also should not be blue, temp of moon light is around 4100k...
Click to expand...

Although moonlight appears white or silvery, use of LEDs producing blue light to simulate moonlight is, at least for some coral species, correct based to peer-reviewed evidence. Use of LEDs producing white light is likely to be OK as well, since these diodes are essentially blue LEDs doped with phosphors that fluoresce longer wavelengths.
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You should read the article posted below you. 4 Blue moonlights would be more than enough to achieve the effect he is desiring. Blue light is perfectly fine to use as moonlights. White light would be ok, but it is going to appear brighter to your eyes and that of fish and invertebrates. I know that from experience. 4 blue dimmable LEDs would be the best case scenario as he could actually create a lunar cycle.
 
alton said:
Looking at the article you need a red lamp, not blue for moon light. My bosses Giesemann light 2x 250w MH(which is 14 years old) uses a incandescent lamp for the moonlight. I tried two lunar pods on my 300g turned down and my fish would not sleep.
http://www.newscientist.com/article...could-help-you-sleep-better.html#.U4XGFWAo6Uk
Click to expand...

I always find it interesting to see how many people interpret the same information differently.

Are you saying just a red lamp? Or Add a red lamp with the blues? Because it clearly shows in several explanations and charts how the moonlight is a full spectrum light , with nearly 66% of it covering everything but the red part of the spectrum.

image_full


I think, for the purposes of this hobby, and the level at which a majority of hobbyists are at, blue led moonlights are an adequate solution. Once you start being really specific and wanting to induce spawning, well then yes, something like the full spectrum tunze moonlight might be a better option.
 
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