It's time, let's see those SPS tanks using LEDs 1 year or longer

[reefsahoy]

I thought the topic of the thread was to show us your 1 yr or older led lit tank? No where in the title did it say or ask an opinion on which is better or worse. So lets try and keep on topic so maybe, just maybe someone out there who uses led with great success can com forward and show/tell us how they do it. Why all the bickering? Give those of us who light their tank with leds to show them? A few years ago when i started a topic about show us your t5 tanks back when that type of lighting was new, the thread started the same way. The local club almost laught me out of town! Now, i think everyone would agree that t5 do work. So Please, give'em a chance, maybe we can learn something.

 

[Nanighan]

^^ Agreed. Lets see those LED tanks.
BTW there is a member here Santoki who has proven that LEDs can give great color (maybe not the best but great regardless) and give awesome growth with all the LED benefits.

Edit: his pics are in the first page but his most recent stuff is probably in another thread.

 

[Paul B]

So as the title says lets see those full blown LED tanks that have been using LEDs for a year or more, and let us know which LEDs you are using Please.

I thought the topic of the thread was to show us your 1 yr or older led lit tank? No where in the title did it say or ask an opinion on which is better or worse. So lets try and keep on topic so maybe

Thats right, I posted some pictures of an old tank with all LEDs, then I shut up.
Everyone has an opinion and I am sure we all like our tanks the way they are, thats why we built them that way.
My pictures are not colorful at all because that is in the photography, not necessarily the tank itself. You can see in my pictures even the copper band butterfly and mandarins don't look colorful in the picture but we all know what those fish look like in person.
So have fun with your arguements and have a great day. :wavehand:

 

[MedRed]

I thought the topic of the thread was to show us your 1 yr or older led lit tank? No where in the title did it say or ask an opinion on which is better or worse. So lets try and keep on topic so maybe, just maybe someone out there who uses led with great success can com forward and show/tell us how they do it. Why all the bickering? Give those of us who light their tank with leds to show them? A few years ago when i started a topic about show us your t5 tanks back when that type of lighting was new, the thread started the same way. The local club almost laught me out of town! Now, i think everyone would agree that t5 do work. So Please, give'em a chance, maybe we can learn something.

how do you think we got here? this thread was all crickets.

 

[jdm1114]

Boom

Boom

Ehsan's tank is not popping colours?..... Can I see pictures of your tank please. It must be awesome. Sorry I missed it if I have.....

Here are a few from Ehsan's LED tank.

Thanks
Mo

Thank you Mo

 

[chingchai]

Maybe we are debating in the same way of long play records VS compact disc or film VS digital camera.
New technology will overcome but it must take time to develop.
Happy reefing guys.

 

[Allmost]

New technology will overcome but it must take time to develop.

EXACTLY !

I dont even know why this discussion .... the answer is simple .. if you actually ask LED makers rather than arguing over who can do white balance on their pics better lol

 

[RobMcC]

This is an interesting thread.:beer:

some aspects of the thread are slightly strange though, as even your computer monitor will make as much difference to colour as the tank husbandry/coral/camera settings/ lighting etc, so in this aspect the debate here is slightly pointless. I'm only going to go on tanks i have seen in the flesh and personal experience, and tbh i've not noticed much difference. In fact there are loads of nice tanks i've seen with both.

as far as pinks... i'm going by what I had in my tank under LEDs. My pink gonoipora popped nicely under the LEDs.

the colors that pop under actinic can really pop under blue LEDs, but that isn't the entire picture.

Those color changes occurred within two weeks of metal halide and within one month I had a completely different tank. It was 100% evident it was the light and not a nutrient issue.

Once upon a time I went to Vivid in order to qualify statements I made regarding the difference on coral color on either side of their LED/MH experiment. This is the same tank with the same nutrients. Here are my findings.


And regarding Dave's tank. I was one of the main people that not only convinced him to do the experiment but also to go with Radions. Dave is a retailer who needs to sell the latest hot products in the market. This would include LEDs. We've had many discussions on LEDs. He himself admits he puts the nicer pieces on the MH side.

The camera doesn't pick up the difference in look. It's there as plain as day in person. Unfortunately, Dave just had to replace a bunch of lost colonies with new ones on both sides after experimenting with vodka. While the MH side still looks better, a lot of the corals on both sides haven't had time to settle in and grow out under their respective lighting.

I've never said LEDs couldn't grow corals. My tank didn't die for the year it was under AI's. growth was even better under the Radions than under the AI's. Traditional lighting had an immediate and sustained impact on growth and color in my tank. The thing is, it's not like LEDs are being adopted slowly. I have seen a LOT of people convert or start new builds with LEDs. My argument is that corals will not look their best under LEDs.

Last pictures under AI Sol Blues after 1 year

1 month later under Radions

3 months later last picture under Radions

1 month later... first pic @ Day 5 of MH and T5

16 days later under MH + T5

3.5 months later under MH + T5

That's a nice sequence. Can I ask what settings the camera is on? As to my eye it looks different every time, so very hard to tell if there is any difference. I reckon colours possibly eben look best under Radions and then similar on the last MH/T5 shot (going on the dendros as a reference). Each to his own though.

I do find your lack of growth under the LEDs strange though. Is it possible that as you were starting out in reefing you had yo-yo-ing levels, as the one year-in shot for the sols looks like fresh cut frags not corals one year old?

For the record I have used both use both T5 and LED for the last year. I have the left half under T5 and the right half under homemade LED (the tank is 6 feet long) and I don't notice any difference in either growth or colour for any coral under either, which I guess isn't much to either side of the camp in this thread (as an experiment I fragged a few colonies and put them in the roughly the same flow and to my light level, but I think LEDs are very bright in blue's which we can't see and burnt some acro's I put them on the sand and they came back):spin3:

I can see how folks might not like the look of LED though. I originally only had two colours of LED in my build (cool white and Royal Blue) and I thought it looked a bit flat (growth was still good though), so about three months I fitted some greens and blues (I also bought some loose red/orange LEDs, but haven't fitted them yet, as i wanted to see how it looked with the blue and greens first). After a year there is still no difference in growth, but I think I may fit the red/oranges when I can be bothered to do all those solders:spin2:. Although i'm not 100% happy with the colour of either side (not the corals they are fine, but just the look).

I actually got a light prism to look at the spectrum of both and the LEDs actually have a broader spectrum, closer to the sun, than the T5s, just the red wasn't as strong, but everthing was there as a continuum, whereas the T5s have noticeable spikes (I thought that was interesting - I tried it on various individual tubes from KZ, aquascience and all had pronounced spikes). It is easy to make a prism and if anybody is interested I can post a link. In summation do i think one is better than the other, no. Is there good growth on both, yes. Is the colour the same under both - I think it can be. LEDs like T5s have to experimented with in the blend (I saw a post by Tony B about his choice of T5 blend on a UK forum) You have to choose which T5s you like for your personal preference and LEDs are the same. Phew - long post sorry...

 

[myzislow]

So why does Dave say in the video that both sides are equal?. You keep glossing over that point?....

Mo

You seem like an intelligent guy; maybe a bit dense, but obviously you're not a moron.

With that said, I honestly cannot believe that you are unable deduce why Dave, a LFS owner and online retailer, would make such a comment...

 

[Moser]

Wow!, Hang on, let's not get too personal!.

I just want somebody to say "Dave is lying". Is that what you are all saying?. I don't wish to paraphrase, I just want somebody to stand up and say it, because I didn't see any evidence to support that.

Also, be careful who you call dense. You don't know what I do or what my level of intelligence is. However, you might get a surprise!.

Mo

 

[Moser]

.....

 

[Nanook]

[flamealert]

 

[acesq]

You seem like an intelligent guy; maybe a bit dense, but obviously you're not a moron.

With that said, I honestly cannot believe that you are unable deduce why Dave, a LFS owner and online retailer, would make such a comment...

Bad form. . . . regarding both Mo and Dave.

And I have seen Dave's tank and spoken with Dave about the differences between the two sides and his impressions. He said what he said because he meant it. And I happen to agree -- both sides look great, there is a difference, but to say side is better is somewhat subjective (I like the MH side a little bit better).

 

[Nanook]

I think a few people here need to go do a water change

 

[Moser]

Mo,

You just don't get it...............or maybe I'm not explaining myself. You seem intent on winning some kind of debate..................there isn't one.

I expressied my opinions & what I expect out of lighting for my tank.........you're just going to have to live with it.

Again...............are you reading my comments?? Birdnests hystix is not an acropora


Btw...........that LED hyacynthis table is from the gallery of one of the people on this thread saying how he's very happy with his LED's. It came straight from his link. The other pic is how that coral should look & it isn't uncommon in the least.


Did you watch the video lecture & see my comments & charts in that thread? It's obvious the older commercial units are lacking the correct full spectrum to support acros. The newer line of units coming out have much better spectrum charts. They have a better chance of working correctly but most haven't even hit the stores yet & then they have to be over Sps tank for 6 months to prove their worth.

The lecture/video explains how important full spectrum at a consistent par level is............... it even goes over a few of the top selling LED units that everyone says are so great.

For anyone else reading this, I highly recommend watching that video before you plunk down a large chunk of or your money on any unit. An educated consumer is a happy one.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2195086

Do a search for the video----"reef aquarium lighting in depth"

If anyone has a problem finding it pm me & I'll email you the link. It's the best hour you'll ever spend on you tube.

For me........I'll just wait for all the dozens of posts to show up from all the 100's of buyers of LED only setups to share their experiences of their SPS dominate systems.

Thanks

I flicked through the video and although it is claimed I am dense, that stuff isn't new to me!.
It's why I keep saying acclimation to LED's is very important regardless of how bright or dim you think the LED is!. The spectrum with LED's is important and the amount of each wavelength is critical.

Thanks though!.

Mo

 

[Moser]

As an example, if you take a Radion.
Run Royal Blue and Blue at 100%, drop the Cool white to 50-60%, minimize green to how you wish to view the coral, but add a bit more red, you strike most Cholorphyll peaks.

It lacks 400-420nm, which I guess will be addressed....

You then put enough units to cover the surface area of the tank properly and run the intensity up, you maintain sufficient PAR to grow your corals with a decent overall spectrum.

When some cheaper spectral analysers become available, then the newer LED pucks and settings will become more relevant in tersm of setting them up to get the most ideal spectrum.

What wasn't addressed in the video was that there are only a few red and green LED's in the full spectrum units, so that when you run all led's at 100%, the relative composition from red and green is much lower overall. This is why that overall curve in the video for the Radion shows a much lower peak for Red and Green.... they are generally used to make the coral show more red and green, or even make the coralline algae pop.

What I have asked from all previous posts cliaming failure with LED is how have you set them up and how intensely have you lit the tank..... it makes a difference with LED. MH/T5 are much more plug and play as for each bulb / tube, you can't select out a damaging peak, so it's generally intensity that damages corals with these technologies and generally when you do a bulb change...... You can with current LED's, both intensity and spectrum can damage corals with LED and do so quite creepingly.... until the tissue just dissolves.
I have seen this cripple SPS tanks many times.

I did it with my Pacific suns 15 or so months ago.

Mo

 

[Alex T.]

There are many, many ways to light an SPS tank. I remember when I first got into the hobby, I bought Mike Palletta's book, "Ultimate Reef Aquariums". If I'm not mistaken, there wasn't anybody using any halide bulbs more blue than 10k. In fact, I think everyone in that book had a deep sand bed as well, and they all used basic "bat wing" reflectors.

When 20k bulbs like Radium, XM20k etc. came on the scene, the hardcore SPS guys shunned them, saying they would never grow SPS corals. A funny thing happened though. They grew, and colored up SPS better than anyone ever dreamed. In fact, Radiums have arguably become the standard by which many bulbs are measured. It's no coincidence that even t5 bulb users gravitate toward using a predominant amount of ATI Blue Plus bulbs in their mix of many. Sanjay Joshi has even said that the Radium may arguably be the most powerful halide bulb at growing SPS corals because it's very difficult to gauge the par/power of light in the blue spectrum. Sound familiar? Many people with multiple Blue Plus t5's have reported bleaching corals as well.

Saying that the SPS colors being produced by LED technology is inferior is akin to what the lighting gurus of 6500k Iwasaki bulbs were saying about Radium users. I don't see many of those 6500, or even 10k guys around anymore. The SPS colors produced by the Radiums were obviously better, and people were willing to sacrifice a little growth to get that eye popping color that many of us want. However, people like Keith Berkelheimer http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2009-03/totm/index.php proved that Radiums can grow SPS corals just as fast or faster than their 6500k rivals.

I'm a halide user (400 watt 20k Radiums), but chose to go with 3 Kessil a150 LED pendants for supplemental lighting (dawn dusk affect) instead of VHO actinics. It's funny, many people that say LED looks unnatural are some of the same people that have VHO Super actinics over their systems, and that's just about the most bizarre, unnatural look you'll ever see. I love it, but let's face reality. Nowhere on Earth will you find a reef that looks like VHO actinics at sunrise and sunset. As our eyes grow to accept the "electric" look of LED's, many more people will switch over. In fact, I don't think the multi chip technology in the Kessil pendants looks anything like a lot of the other LED lighting setups I've seen. It's much more "halide like". With LED's, it's not as simple as a one bulb fits all scenario like it is with halides. Once people started playing around with t5 bulb combinations, there were some incredible SPS tanks and fixtures popping up all over the place, with naysayers sporting signs over their cake holes that read "Insert foot here". Such will be the outcome of all the LED haters as well. It's just how things work folks. Bash the new thing...the new car. Then hear it from your friends when you love it and it's parked in your driveway.

LED is here to stay, whether people want to accept it or not. Sure, it's going to take time to reach the masses in both price point and versatility. There are many nice SPS tanks that use LED's, but saying that a tank would be better if it had halides just seems laughable, and I run halides!!! If someone does have t5 supplements on their LED fixture the haters will point out that the great colors are because of the t5's. Assuming that the SPS forum has a more experienced and skilled hobbyists participating in these discussions, I would expect more people to be chiming in to say that it's not all about lighting. Come on people! There's so much more to getting the best color out of our SPS corals than just lighting. The hobbyists fiddling with LED's or even building their own fixtures are the pioneers that manufacturers will be listening to when they see what's working, and aim for better products to offer the hobby.

I chose to stick with halides because I'm really not an early adopter of new technology, and want to see who the major players are in a few years after the "me too" companies fall by the way side. Let's not be so closed minded in learning what we can about an exciting and more efficient way to illuminate our expensive boxes of water. I hear myself doing this with my kids when I tell them the music today isn't as good as when I was in college in the early 90's. Whenever I catch myself saying things like this I know it's time for a reality check, a stiff cocktail and a willingness to give new things their due. Just because somebody went back to halides doesn't mean LED's are terrible.

There's so much we still don't know about lighting, filtration, the way corals feed....you name it. The proof is there. Many just refuse to see.

 

[JPMagyar]

Come on people! There's so much more to getting the best color out of our SPS corals than just lighting.

Hey Alex,

Awesome well thought out post!

BUT . . . I'm gonna have to disagree with this comment quite vehemently. If you read articles from Weast or Tyree or any major SPS junkie from the '90s, you'll find that they all reference the introduction of 20k MH lights as changing the game in terms of what corals they could keep and what colors those corals maintained. Zooxanth live off light and change their dominant clades based on the wavelengths they receive. LEDs are restricted in the wavelengths they produce hence they produce vivid red roses and stringy green beans. T5s and radiums are proven winners; LEDs are not. Again this is one guys opinion, and really I do respect yours as well; not to mention it all comes down to your own personal pleasure as we are talking about a hobby here. I just like to keep the discussion balanced :wave:


Joe

 

[MedRed]

The proof is there. Many just refuse to see.

This statement is the opposite of reality. The proof shows LEDs are not as good as traditional lighting. I'm not saying that LEDs are bad, they just aren't as good with coral color.

What I have asked from all previous posts cliaming failure with LED is how have you set them up and how intensely have you lit the tank..... it makes a difference with LED. MH/T5 are much more plug and play as for each bulb / tube, you can't select out a damaging peak, so it's generally intensity that damages corals with these technologies and generally when you do a bulb change...... You can with current LED's, both intensity and spectrum can damage corals with LED and do so quite creepingly.... until the tissue just dissolves.
I have seen this cripple SPS tanks many times.

I did it with my Pacific suns 15 or so months ago.

Mo

In my build threads, I've posted my mix and intensities. I started off slow and ramped up as the corals acclimated. I even ramped slower than most recommend. My tank didn't fail with LEDs. I didn't kill corals. I switched because something was missing.

I actually still had both my Radions and AI's when I switched to traditional lighting. It took me a little while to sell my LEDs just based on available time. The MH+T5 I fixture bought could have been sold for what I paid for it, and I could have decided at anytime to keep my LEDs and sell the MH+T5 fixture. The change in viewing aesthetic plus the immediate response in coral color and growth easily sealed the deal.

I think a few people here need to go do a water change

I'm doing one tonight!

That's a nice sequence. Can I ask what settings the camera is on? As to my eye it looks different every time, so very hard to tell if there is any difference. I reckon colours possibly eben look best under Radions and then similar on the last MH/T5 shot (going on the dendros as a reference). Each to his own though.

The first pictures were on manual settings and at some point under the Radions I switched to Auto settings. I had my LEDs on ramp cycles so depending on the time of day, the light intensity would be different. While I miss ramping, one nice thing about my new lights is that I can take pictures between 10 am and 6 pm and the lights are the same every day. Here are the original photos that haven't been touched besides cropping. Light intensity and LED color mix will play a role in how these pictures look but you can get the gist.

04.13.2011 AI SOL Blue

04.29.2011 (Most SPS added around this time)

06.15.2011

09.26.2011

11.11.2011 Radions up for about a month

01.30.2012

03.10.2012 MH + T5 up for about 5 days

03.26.2012

05.12.2012

06.30.2012

I do find your lack of growth under the LEDs strange though. Is it possible that as you were starting out in reefing you had yo-yo-ing levels, as the one year-in shot for the sols looks like fresh cut frags not corals one year old?

I didn't have yo-yo-ing levels. I started low and ramped up. A year later I changed over to Radions and matched output to what I was running on the AI's. The transitions were smooth as butter and far less than what would normally be seen when introducing a frag to a totally different tank. Growth was much better with the Radions than the AI's... and jumped tremendously with MH+T5. Even my zoas benefited from the change in light.

Also, the frags were not fresh cut... they just weren't growing. The pic from 04/2011 shows several of the frags at an early date. Some of those date back to 02/2011. Even my fresh cut frags grew better under traditional lighting

 

[MedRed]

Thank you Mo

We've already gone over this. photos are touched up. coral color is completely different.