LED's are bad for our Hobby

[ajespo85]

LEDs have been good to me. Grows SPS, LPS, Zoas just fine. Then again, I STARTED my tank with LEDs.. So everything in my system was use to my LEDs and thrived on them. If your system was thriving for years with MH and all of a sudden you switch to LEDs, then yeah, you might have some problems.

 

[reef bloke]

As another example here is the shop of a Friend in the U.K that runs LED in his shop, he grows out his frags and favours LED over other lights now but was sceptical at first as we all were .

 

[fishguy597]

Very nice love the sound track. There is a lfs in Chicagoland that is running all radion gen 3's over all there tanks. I forgot how many but probably 20+ units. Their coral usually looks really good.

 

[Denadai]

You can keep your MH's and T5's and Chillers and change them expensive bulbs every 6 months and ill keep my LED's that will last for tens of years with much less energy bill and no need for a chiller.

I must know, how much has your energy bill + bulb bill soared?

10 years ???? My vega leds burned less than 1 year and my Hydra 52 less than 6 months. Also I don´t believe people will keep their led´s for 10 years......today each month there is a new led technology and people love to change.

How I said....if you go with leds you need a lot of them

Let´s do some math :

Today I have 4 x Hydra 52 over 73 x 23 x 20 tank

Each Hydra is 135W so 135w x 4 = 540W

But, in my opinion 4 x Hydra is not enough because there are a lot of shadow in my tank and a lot of shadow in corals

So the best here should be 8 x Hydra 52 = 1080W

With 3 x ATI Sunpower with 6 x 24W I got an ideal coverage in my tank . So 6x24x3 = 432W !!!

Again, Leds in my opinion just work fine if you have a lot of them.

This is my tank and I should have bought T5 instead hydra 52

Best Regards

 

[Nanighan]

I think this debate is pointless as there are people who will never be convince to use LEDs and there are people who have success with them and will never go back to MH/T5. I use the cheap chinese LED's and have had great luck with them, and will never go back to mh.
Look at all the post above, ReefBloke and his shopkeeper friend use hydra 52's (5 of them) and their reefs looks amazing. Denadai, using the same fixtures has 4 but wants 8, and is already convince that his reef will be better using t5. I think it looks great and just needs time to fill in.

 

[VegasMike]

Wow, are you really able to run those Hydra 52's at 100% as you are implying? I can't get to anywhere near that and my tank dimensions are 72"x24"x30".

Furthermore, you would not need eight, but five works great as long as you have the right height above the water surface and run them perpendicular to the front as is recommended. What are you currently running yours at? I have five over each of my two identical tanks at 11" AWL and don't really notice any shadowing.

Turning the lights to a perpendicular configuration helps quite a bit on the shadowing.

 

[muttley101]

I think this debate is pointless as there are people who will never be convince to use LEDs and there are people who have success with them and will never go back to MH/T5. I use the cheap chinese LED's and have had great luck with them, and will never go back to mh.
Look at all the post above, ReefBloke and his shopkeeper friend use hydra 52's (5 of them) and their reefs looks amazing. Denadai, using the same fixtures has 4 but wants 8, and is already convince that his reef will be better using t5. I think it looks great and just needs time to fill in.

Unless you tried all you really don't know what you're missing. I went the Radion LED route.. I had very nice colors, but no where near the growth. Don't get me wrong I like the idea of LED's, but I think there is still need for development.

I just switched back to MH/T5 combo and noticed a huge increase in growth. Also, I had some corals that did not grow much at all take off for the first time.

I believe that if the LED's are not set correctly you can inhibit growth on some corals where others do well. For a new hobbyist that can be frustrating. I'm not saying that LED's are bad for the Hobby, but it would be nice if there was a more standardized approach for correct spectrum's for new users.

In California alot of LFS's Burn 'n Turn corals here. This is a term I made up locally because of what I see LFS's doing. It makes sense for a LFS' to grow out under MH or t5's then display under LED's. If I took a coral that has been growing under a MH then put under a LED you will be blown away. So yes I can see a LFS using LED's in their shop.. Colors sell corals...

Somebody from a local club described the new thing is this hobby is to have every thing look like your on a Acid Trip in Windex water. I mean most of the corals displayed online are saturated under Royal Blues... What ever happen to the natural reef look... It's easier to sell to the Wife or Husband a glow in the dark coral than a natural looking coral.

 

[Wazzel]

As far as the growth claim, has anyone ever actually measured and recorded length, mass, etc? Observational bias is a real thing. Unless someone actually took the time to record growth parameter there is no way to verify the claim one grows better than another.

 

[Denadai]

Turning the lights to a perpendicular configuration helps quite a bit on the shadowing.

Agree

I had a power outage here for 3 days last month ...lose all my SPS.....so now I will just keep the fishes for a long time and zoas. Enough for me for a while

When I return to SPS , T5 again

Best Regards

 

[b7fig]

Growth and misc

Growth and misc

As far as the growth claim, has anyone ever actually measured and recorded length, mass, etc? Observational bias is a real thing. Unless someone actually took the time to record growth parameter there is no way to verify the claim one grows better than another.

You are absolutely correct, but an experienced hobbyist has a pretty good feel for this. Where I would be more skeptical is when a new hobbyist who has never had any other lighting other then LED's says their corals "grow like weeds". What do they have to compare it against? When you have had numerous lighting systems, you know what the difference is.

 

[Wazzel]

You are absolutely correct, but an experienced hobbyist has a pretty good feel for this. Where I would be more skeptical is when a new hobbyist who has never had any other lighting other then LED's says their corals "grow like weeds". What do they have to compare it against? When you have had numerous lighting systems, you know what the difference is.

Not to discount that, but people do tend to see what they expect to see. It takes a keen observer who is impartial to not do what is human nature. I have grown SPS under multiple lighting systems and have not noticed an overall difference. I have not had the opportunity to actually test so I could just be seeing what I want to see too, who knows?

 

[3FordFamily]

Not to discount that, but people do tend to see what they expect to see. It takes a keen observer who is impartial to not do what is human nature. I have grown SPS under multiple lighting systems and have not noticed an overall difference. I have not had the opportunity to actually test so I could just be seeing what I want to see too, who knows?

I agree. I've had MH, T5HO, and LED. I now use LED on all three of my tanks. My MH and T5 did great, but I got tired of replacing bulbs constantly. This was expensive. The heat was also an issue with MH as many of you have reported. My electric bills are the same as before, even though I added an entire tank. (So the LED's may have at least partially offset this). To each his/her own.

 

[b7fig]

With a thread headline as this, I expected a lot of LED guys to come to the defense. I do not doubt any of their success. But for every 1 person who has had success, there are 9 who had no or marginal success at best.

Several months back when I got my Radion Gen 3, I was looking for good lighting programs. I searched all the LED threads for the best tanks. Every time I found a beautifully lit Radion tank, I would either post or send a PM and ask for their lighting program. Virtually every time, the response back was:

Sorry, went back to T5 or MH or tank crashed (no idea if that anything to do with lights)
I received a few emails with the program attached and said here's one from 2013, but i went back to T5's or added some T'5's etc.

If you look at the MH/T5 threads, it is filled with people who once had LED's and went back.

There is obviously an issue(s) besides being a "stupid hobbyist" which I think somebody said early.

 

[glaukos]

I'm not a big fun of leds too.
Tried my luck 3 times for the reasons we all almost did but never worked for me so i went back to t5.
The only way i'm using leds again would be as secondary light to t5 just to have that shimmering and nice blue touch they give.
Think i might just steal someones ati hybrid

Can't say though that i haven't seen awesome tanks using leds.
I think that the best thing would be the guys that have success with them to share what the key points are and find out what was/is the problem with the other hobbyists that used them or still are with not that much of success.

From what i've seen people with success use almost as many watts as they used with t5.
They also use many leds if it's diy or many kits so they can cover the tank with light from side to side and not have that shading problem.
Maybe the hight you place it or the % plays an important role too.More blue more white?
Can't think of other parameters than can have huge impact.
And of course there is the quality of leds since all the brands don't use the same.
The truth is somewhere in the middle i think

 

[Wazzel]

With a thread headline as this, I expected a lot of LED guys to come to the defense. I do not doubt any of their success. But for every 1 person who has had success, there are 9 who had no or marginal success at best.

Several months back when I got my Radion Gen 3, I was looking for good lighting programs. I searched all the LED threads for the best tanks. Every time I found a beautifully lit Radion tank, I would either post or send a PM and ask for their lighting program. Virtually every time, the response back was:

Sorry, went back to T5 or MH or tank crashed (no idea if that anything to do with lights)
I received a few emails with the program attached and said here's one from 2013, but i went back to T5's or added some T'5's etc.

If you look at the MH/T5 threads, it is filled with people who once had LED's and went back.

There is obviously an issue(s) besides being a "stupid hobbyist" which I think somebody said early.

There are issues with using LED, for sure. IMO the issues are mostly not with the hardware, but the operation. If it was all hardware no one would have success. Some of the switches could have been for pure preference/observation bias issues and not actual failures.

 

[muttley101]

LED's are bad for our Hobby

I'm not saying that growth did not occur with LED's its just some corals did well and others seem inhibited/stunted. Here is a timeline of a coral that I bought on 7/19/2014 from YourReef. Just a simple Sunset Monti...I have the online receipt if you need further proof. This growth has happened under T5/MH combo...

Feb 2nd - First day of decent polyp extension

Feb 9th - Better Extension

Today Starting to color up.

Unfortunately I was unable to take a ruler to measure growth. However, I believe it has done alot better than the previous year. Not saying that other corals didn't thrive because I have those too under LED's. Fortunately they are still thriving under the T5/MH combo.

A coral that did well under my LED's

Sept. 2nd 2014

Nov. 2nd 2014

I'm displaying this in case you wanted to question my husbandry of my corals.

 

[sahin]

As another example here is the shop of a Friend in the U.K that runs LED in his shop, he grows out his frags and favours LED over other lights now but was sceptical at first as we all were .

Paul put the T5's supplements last I heard. And that was a few months ago. He originally had T5+LED, went just LED and is now back to T5+LED.

I think this debate is pointless as there are people who will never be convince to use LEDs and there are people who have success with them and will never go back to MH/T5. I use the cheap chinese LED's and have had great luck with them, and will never go back to mh.
Look at all the post above, ReefBloke and his shopkeeper friend use hydra 52's (5 of them) and their reefs looks amazing. Denadai, using the same fixtures has 4 but wants 8, and is already convince that his reef will be better using t5. I think it looks great and just needs time to fill in.

See above, that shopkeeper is back to using LED+T5.

Dont get me wrong, I really like your tank Ron. And as I said earlier, I can recommend Radions and Hydra52...but the spread of light and cost is still an issue.

 

[k4ndyk1ng]

As another example here is the shop of a Friend in the U.K that runs LED in his shop, he grows out his frags and favours LED over other lights now but was sceptical at first as we all were .

Not on topic but where is this in the uk?

 

[sahin]

Not on topic but where is this in the uk?

In Harlow. Its called Advanced Aquarium Consultancy. Very clean/tidy little shop with great stock and a nice bloke who owns the place. Paul has 25+ years of reefkeeping experience and IMO is one of the most experienced LFS keepers out there. Really knows his stuff...unlike many other store owners...

 

[Mortie31]

I believe one of the main reasons so many people have struggled with LED's is that most experienced SPS keepers were very slow to switch from MH/ T5's and hence a lot of the experimenting was done by the less experienced, who maybe struggled to maintain the stable water parameters needed to be successful with SPS corals and were also trying new untested technology and therefore maybe not have seen the success they expected. As several others have commented to change lighting systems over SPS corals can only lead to trouble especially when switching from the very diffuse multidirectional light of MH or T5's to the very point focused light of LED's especially if you choose high powered LED clusters such as Radions or AI's, so as the more experience started to change over they also experienced issues as well, in addition I'm a firm believer that the small very powerful clusters of LEDS ( some have 30-40 LED watts per cluster) as found on a lot of the leading brands cause too many hot spots that then leads the users to have to dial down the light units to 60,70 or 80% of capacity to prevent burning, this then leads to lower levels of light deeper or more to the edges of the tank. I therefore prefer lots of lower intensity 1 or 2 watt LEDs as found on Orphek or Lani units, these units give an even spread of PAR, PUR and visible light. I've had 4 Orpheks 2 luminux bars and 6 TMC bars over my 66 x 30 x 24 for 3 years now and am delighted by the results I've had, these units aren't controllable and are either on or off and have to run on 100% I have in total 640 watts of LED's..the main lights hang 15inches over the water surface. Would I have got better with MH? I don't know never used them.
Here are a couple of iPad nasty pics

Cheers Mortie