Anyone Thinking of Dumping LEDS and going back to Halides

Aqualund said:
I would debate the amount and types of amazing sps they had on the LED side after that year.
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Dave seemed like he was kinda pushing the led's for Eco Tech at first but then he made the switch back after about a year and a half I think. They used to post updates on the website but they have recently made a new page and it's totally different. You tube them. There's a ton of videos on you tube. I think that experiment is about 3 years old.
 
Drae said:
Dave seemed like he was kinda pushing the led's for Eco Tech at first but then he made the switch back after about a year and a half I think. They used to post updates on the website but they have recently made a new page and it's totally different. You tube them. There's a ton of videos on you tube. I think that experiment is about 3 years old.
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Yup. I think I remember his reasoning being problems with growth and color.
 
Is it this one?

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/at21xN_6224?list=PLF423E3E71215D27D" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

or

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IpJM-EIrPI0?list=PLF423E3E71215D27D" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

not really conclusive
 
No it's not conclusive on the you tube vids. I was checking them out after I made that post. Somewhere along the lines a little while back the conclusion has kinda been swept under the rug... hmm
 
I personally like all sources of light :)

I think someone just needs to be a true side-by-side... including weighing the corals for growth calc.
 
personally i appreciate all the led users out there willing to take expensive risks to try to improve the hobby. led lights are like cell phones. there is a new latest greatest one on the market about every 6 months. i love mh and t5 combos. that's my preference for now. its reliable and proven. there will come a time when mh bulbs are extinct. look around you. warehouses, gas stations, schools, stadiums, houses, and many more are all switching to more energy efficient forms of lighting. i think we may only be a few years away from having a led light that everyone can agree will grow corals.
 
I would bet by now, there's been more money spent on researching efficiencies of led's than all the money put into research AND production of t5's and mh's.

I believe that justifies a resounding 'no' on the question of switching back.
 
tlc said:
personally i appreciate all the led users out there willing to take expensive risks to try to improve the hobby. led lights are like cell phones. there is a new latest greatest one on the market about every 6 months. i love mh and t5 combos. that's my preference for now. its reliable and proven. there will come a time when mh bulbs are extinct. look around you. warehouses, gas stations, schools, stadiums, houses, and many more are all switching to more energy efficient forms of lighting. i think we may only be a few years away from having a led light that everyone can agree will grow corals.
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You are never going to get a consensus. So much of all the lighting debates revolve around preference and nothing else.
 
NoobtoSalt said:
I'm on the opposite side of many comments here i guess. I love my leds. Have the best sps growth I've ever had. I've ran halides and t5 over the years and nothing compares to the quality as the leds. Interesting read here though. I've been running them now for about seven months

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2
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What brand and type of LEDs are you running? I'm starting a 120 gal and still on the fence.
 
Part of the problem with this debate is that there are two aspects to lighting - how well it fuels coral growth and how the corals appear, and the two are not necessarily congruous. In addition, digital photography can be horribly inaccurate at representing colors, so you always have to ask if a picture is a true representation of how a tank looks, good or bad.

Another problem with LEDs is that there is a huge amount of diversity in LED fixtures; far more than with MH or T5s, meaning it's difficult to make blanket statements about LEDs since the drivers, assortment and quality of the LEDs can make a difference in how well they work. Since very few people have PAR meters much less spectral analysis equipment it's difficult to tell much of a difference beyond seeing how organisms grow.

There are enough stories of people having good success with LEDs that I don't think you can dismiss them. Likewise there are plenty of stories of people who haven't had success. My suspicion is that there are some species that will do better under MHs, and some that may do better under LEDs, but the factors I mentioned above make it very difficult to sort out.
 
sleepydoc said:
Part of the problem with this debate is that there are two aspects to lighting - how well it fuels coral growth and how the corals appear, and the two are not necessarily congruous. In addition, digital photography can be horribly inaccurate at representing colors, so you always have to ask if a picture is a true representation of how a tank looks, good or bad.



.
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This seems very true. MH looks to bring out better and somewhat faster growth over a larger spectrum of corals. However, it looks to me that LEDs bring out more color that the MH give the corals but dont necessarily bring to our eye. I have taken to running both but the tank looks best under the Radions only in the evening.
 
power boat jim said:
This seems very true. MH looks to bring out better and somewhat faster growth over a larger spectrum of corals. However, it looks to me that LEDs bring out more color that the MH give the corals but dont necessarily bring to our eye. I have taken to running both but the tank looks best under the Radions only in the evening.
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I agree. It's not just a side by side of MH and LED...

It's MH1 vs. MH2 vs. MH3 vs. LED1 vs. LED2 vs. LED3....

Feels like one large flat frag tank with the same water but with light separating baffles creating a matrix of zones with different lights on top of each one.

That looks like a reasonable plan if you start with a large enough group of mother colonies to get equal size frags. It would likely take a team of coral surgeons to give each frag the same care so avoid skewing the results.
 
If you all look back in this thread, you will all see that I am a long time LED supporter and have a LARGE custom LED fixture over my 300g system. That being said....

The change may be coming for my tank. We have been having difficulty with color on many of our corals, and growth on nearly ALL of them. The only thing that is really growing is our montipora digitata (which seems to grow under any light). We just ordered a couple of 14k Phoenix bulbs, reflectors, and ballasts to see if that help things improve. We will be placing these over 1/3 of the tank and leave the LED's over the rest of the tank.

My first impressions are that the halide is going to improve the corals. It is MUCH more intense than our current LED's. We thought that the LED's were intense, but next to the Halides, they are quite dim. The biggest concern is not bleaching corals during the switch.

For those thinking that the problem could be something else... you're right, it could be. However, we have exhausted every other avenue in an effort to fix the problem. This is pretty much the last thing we can think of to help things improve. I will keep everyone up to date on the results.
 
I am SOOOOO looking forward to hearing/seeing your results with a side by side comparison. I should have done that too back in December when we stopped using LED and went to MH/T5 but really couldn't due to our fixture type. If I would have, I could show some pretty spectacular changes since we did 2 1/2 months ago.
 
lpsouth1978 said:
If you all look back in this thread, you will all see that I am a long time LED supporter and have a LARGE custom LED fixture over my 300g system. That being said....

The change may be coming for my tank. We have been having difficulty with color on many of our corals, and growth on nearly ALL of them. The only thing that is really growing is our montipora digitata (which seems to grow under any light). We just ordered a couple of 14k Phoenix bulbs, reflectors, and ballasts to see if that help things improve. We will be placing these over 1/3 of the tank and leave the LED's over the rest of the tank.

My first impressions are that the halide is going to improve the corals. It is MUCH more intense than our current LED's. We thought that the LED's were intense, but next to the Halides, they are quite dim. The biggest concern is not bleaching corals during the switch.

For those thinking that the problem could be something else... you're right, it could be. However, we have exhausted every other avenue in an effort to fix the problem. This is pretty much the last thing we can think of to help things improve. I will keep everyone up to date on the results.
Click to expand...
Following I thought you had gotten out.
 
lpsouth1978 said:
If you all look back in this thread, you will all see that I am a long time LED supporter and have a LARGE custom LED fixture over my 300g system. That being said....

The change may be coming for my tank. We have been having difficulty with color on many of our corals, and growth on nearly ALL of them. The only thing that is really growing is our montipora digitata (which seems to grow under any light). We just ordered a couple of 14k Phoenix bulbs, reflectors, and ballasts to see if that help things improve. We will be placing these over 1/3 of the tank and leave the LED's over the rest of the tank.

My first impressions are that the halide is going to improve the corals. It is MUCH more intense than our current LED's. We thought that the LED's were intense, but next to the Halides, they are quite dim. The biggest concern is not bleaching corals during the switch.

For those thinking that the problem could be something else... you're right, it could be. However, we have exhausted every other avenue in an effort to fix the problem. This is pretty much the last thing we can think of to help things improve. I will keep everyone up to date on the results.
Click to expand...

you know that quantity of light is what counts..
mh have a lumen efficiency of 70-115
LED's currently are exceding 160l/w and will most likely keep rising...where MH is "stuck"..for the most part:
37-3.jpg


And 10 3W emitters is usually not 30W of "lumens".

If you didn't replace MH's w/ at least 1/2W of real watts of LED's for 1 real watt of MH you really decreased your overall photon count.

LED's MAIN strength lies in maintenance, flexibility, and directionality..
minor strengths are energy savings and a few others..

Oh and a meaningless statement..
a LARGE custom LED fixture over my 300g system.
Click to expand...


What are the diodes runnig at, and how many..
 
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