Anyone Thinking of Dumping LEDS and going back to Halides

[karimwassef]

If he runs it and shows that it's better - someone should take his custom LED light and make it available - at least he'll have data to back up his system's advantage.

lps- I don't care which way it turns out - thanks for making the effort.

 

[seamonster124]

Just wanted to
Share this amazing LED Tank
http://youtu.be/z1Fmsvq2wQ8

 

[karimwassef]

amazing what a good camera will do to a video with LEDs.

All my vids are with my iPhone

so I have to turn off all LEDs when I take vids.

 

[jeremybunn]

I try to find local tanks that are wildly successful and copy them. Two led examples are ReefnJunkie and stylaster. These guys both have tanks of legendary status and use wildly different led fixtures. I would be hard pressed to find tanks nicer than these. There is also an amazing t5 tank in our northwest area. What am I saying? Total bs that you cannot have a jaw dropping led lit tank. Google their threads they are both on several forums if you want proof. For me, I have seen it in person and am a believer.

 

[RobbyG]

Folks if you switching to LEDs be prepared for a bumpy ride. Your corals will react just like they do to any other major parameter change. You may see some corals looking off and some may die but most will adapt and start to thrive after a few months. Just make sure you work out your levels to as closely a match your old system.

 

[AZRippster]

I've seen the statement several times in these threads that say when moving from one lighting type to another, and especially so going from MH, T5, or a combo to LED, to expect losses. When I migrated our 180G to a 450G, going from LED to a different LED setup, this definitely happened. After a year on the 450G LED setup, I decided to switch to MH/T5 this past December. I lost nothing, zero. In fact, I've had more growth and bio activity in the past 3 months than the previous entire year. Now what scares me is, over the past month and a half, I've been working on an LED/T5 solution to run during the summer months (Arizona gets hot). Here in about another 2 months or less, the LED/T5 solution will be hung for about 6 or so months until it gets cool again. If these statements are true, this is going to be a scary swap. I guess time will tell.

 

[Mr. Brooks]

I think you'd be a lot better off picking one and just sticking with it year round.

 

[AZRippster]

I think you'd be a lot better off picking one and just sticking with it year round.

You are probably correct, but I wanted to try this as an experiment. To be honest, I'm hoping the LED/T5 solution proves to be everything I hoped for. I ran MH/VHO in the '80s and early '90s, but moved entirely to LED in 2011. Our 180G did pretty darn good, but with the 450G, coverage was difficult and shadowing definitely became an issue. Short of doubling or more manufacturer's suggested fixture count, I thought I would give MH/T5 a try, and it's been awesome. I really don't want to run a chiller or have our home's AC work any harder than it has to during the summer months, so a seasonal lighting solution came to mind. Fortunately we are about 12-16 degrees cooler than Phoenix, so that helps.

 

[Mr. Brooks]

I'm going to run a T5/Radion combo. From all my research, I've come to the conclusion that this is a close second to T5/halide. Heat is an issue for me so I'm ok with second best, for now.

 

[HaroldT]

I was just at Vivid aquariums in Los Angeles. They were in the process of re-doing their huge show tank. They had been running half Radions, half halides as a comparison for the last couple years.

Talk to the workers there and they will tell you the Metal Halide side was doing much better than the LED side. Both Rudy and Jesus told me that.

 

[Fredfish]

Talk to the workers there and they will tell you the Metal Halide side was doing much better than the LED side. Both Rudy and Jesus told me that.

That begs the question: Why are they going with the 'worse' light?

 

[Aqualund]

That begs the question: Why are they going with the 'worse' light?

Probably energy costs, and most likely not a MH requirement in the tank since by now it is probably mostly montiporas,LPS, and softies and very little or no difficult acropora colonies.

 

[jda]

The two best LFS around here use LED fixtures on their SPS (ish) displays even though they know that they are not better because they can sell more Mitras and Radions (what they sell) that way. It is about the margin and bottom line to them. They mostly have birdsnets, montis, catspaw, a few stags, shortcake and a clam now (lost their PM, pearlberry, and a lot of others).

 

[RobbyG]

They most likely are running the LEDs with a setting that gives maximum wow factor and not a setting that closely mimics the lights that they had the coral under before. What's really needed in the hobby are better Light meters that can actually give you a real time analysis of the light spectrum. Yes they have them but I mean something affordable. It certainly is doable and there is a market for it.

I know MH is better, but it's days are numbered, the sooner people start to move to LEDs is the less pain they will feel later on.

 

[jda]

Why exactly are the days number for MH? Why would anybody want to feel this pain now if LED is always getting better and will be the only way to go in a few years (tongue in cheek since about 2009). Why would people not want to wait until a few years from now?

 

[Wazzel]

They most likely are running the LEDs with a setting that gives maximum wow factor and not a setting that closely mimics the lights that they had the coral under before. What's really needed in the hobby are better Light meters that can actually give you a real time analysis of the light spectrum. Yes they have them but I mean something affordable. It certainly is doable and there is a market for it.

I know MH is better, but it's days are numbered, the sooner people start to move to LEDs is the less pain they will feel later on.

As long and MH is the primary choice for industrial lighting there will be reef bulbs. When stadiums, gyms, parking garages, etc start to move to other lighting sources you can start to worry. Our hobby is a small segment of the industrial lighting industry.

 

[karimwassef]

So... street and tunnel lighting is moving to high power LED now.

The difficulty wasn't with the light output of LED, but with the light source density. As the 200W multi-chips mature, their output density will make them applicable to industrial lighting applications.

Unless broad spectrum is a requirement, there's no reason multi-chip LEDs won't eventually take over.

 

[Fredfish]

Why exactly are the days number for MH? ...

Probably because the primary use, industrial lighting is moving to LED. The benefits of LEDs, their focused light and efficiency

Our hobby is a tiny fraction of the lighting industry. We are the tail, not the dog.

 

[Fredfish]

Probably energy costs, and most likely not a MH requirement in the tank since by now it is probably mostly montiporas,LPS, and softies and very little or no difficult acropora colonies.

Wait. I thought the energy savings were minuscule.

The two best LFS around here use LED fixtures on their SPS (ish) displays even though they know that they are not better because they can sell more Mitras and Radions (what they sell) that way.

Have you actually asked them? My impression is that our local retailers don't sell much in the way of high end lighting. I suppose having Radions over the tank might sell lots of cheap(ish) Orbit Marine units.

 

[RobbyG]

Exactly! Everything is moving towards LED technology.
Even getting a good flashlight that uses a bulb is hard. Home lighting is moving to LED and so are industrial lights. At some point the price for MH will sky rocket as the manufacturing base diminishes and long before you get to that point the companies that make MH equipment for Reef tanks will probably be only making and selling LED fixtures.

The pain comes when you have massive amounts of coral that have grown under MH and you find yourself in a posistion were you have to switch. It's better to start supplementing with LEDs now and wean them off the MH slowly than to one day find the bulbs etc are impossible to buy and have to make a sudden change. The technology is only going to get better with LEDs in terms of effiecency and wavelength choices. Your still going to need to figure out what works for you and from what I am seeing there is already enough combinations to grow coral just fine.