LED's are bad for our Hobby

[Oldude]

I am a MH & T5 guy although in my experience sps can be a bit of a crap shoot. What I mean by that is on my 400 gal tank I run 4 x 250 watt HQI, 12 54 watt T5 and a single Radion LED in the front right corner of my tank and I while I have found that most corals do better in the MH & T5 areas there are actually some corals that seem to do better under the Radion. That said they have to be getting some supplemental lighting from the MH or T5 in that area but I think it's got to be pretty minimal.

 

[ReefCowboy]

I have three hydras over a 36" tank and while running blues at 90%, corals didn't look good until I supplemented with T5's. All colors have been great since then.
When the T5s go off I look at that tank with only LEDs and can't immagine it being successful with that lighting alone. Great for accent, Pop, but LEDs are a joke long run no matter what I see out there.

 

[screamingibis]

Muttley's picture says it best, lol. The question for me was what would grow and give corals best with their natural colors. Didn't want to worry about heat or electricity. What is it that in my opinion would be best?

Electricity? My kids leave every light and TV on in the house 24/7. All I do is turn lights off. You can probably see my house from the Russian space station at night.

Heat? Living in north Georgia, I keep my house at 76 in the summer, run little 10 inch fans over the top of the tank and have never had a problem with heat. Never a need for chiller.

I should probably add that I drive a DIESEL GUZZLING pickup truck and have a boat that destroys gas. Kids ride dirt bikes and four-wheelers but enjoy the ride. In other words, it's expensive to have fun.

I guess what I'm saying is that Radiums with T-5's cannot be beat.

 

[dkeller_nc]

LEDs are the thing of the future. They are used for car heallamps, traffic signals, flashlights etc. There is a reason they use LEDs for proctoscopes instead of MH. I guess it is because they use less electricity

Hmm - a screaming hot metal halide lamp and the word "proctoscope" don't lead to a pleasant mental image.

 

[Wazzel]

I have three hydras over a 36" tank and while running blues at 90%, corals didn't look good until I supplemented with T5's. All colors have been great since then.
When the T5s go off I look at that tank with only LEDs and can't immagine it being successful with that lighting alone. Great for accent, Pop, but LEDs are a joke long run no matter what I see out there.

From what I am seeing in my tank LEDs are no joke. I have a build thread and post pics quarterly. All I ask is to not make my tank thread a lighting system discussion. There are enough of those already.

 

[Wazzel]

Hmm - a screaming hot metal halide lamp and the word "proctoscope" don't lead to a pleasant mental image.

Proctoscope alone dose not lead to pleasant images

 

[BrentH]

I personally Think a combo of diff lights is the the easiest way to get good results the ati led/t5 to me seems ideal? I had 2 ai vegas and had a hard time on how dim they appeared and cooked a few sps when turned up I personally didn't habe the patients

 

[mhucasey]

That is correct Sahin, due to the rock structure , coral growth and layout he has 2 tubes at the front as fill lights for his LPS. He has just had stretcher plates made up to space his 52's wider apart and he plans to put another 2 at the front in their place. He is considering setting up a new tank however I think , I'll be there in line for frags if he does lol

He is doing LEDs correctly in that he is using 5 Units and working toward 7 total, but that is where the gap between LEDs and other forms of lighting shrink. 7 Hydra 52s is a $4000 dollar investment! Not to mention 7 Hydras will consume up to 945 Watts!


I'd be fine if manufacturers and the stores selling the LEDs were honest about this. In many cases they aren't, and the reef keeper that just plunked down hundreds to thousands of dollars for LEDs that are less than half of what he needs gets screwed. That is what the OP was getting at - when people fail at a reef tank, animals die, and the keeper gives up. That's bad for our hobby.

 

[1MP3R1AL]

That is what the OP was getting at - when people fail at a reef tank, animals die, and the keeper gives up. That's bad for our hobby.

In NO WAY am I saying its ever a good thing when animals die, trust me, I don't sell/give frags to certain people who aren't perfectly ready for them.

But... If a new reefer kills all their inhabitants because they cannot figure out why their LFS sold them miracle low temperature wonder lights that don't work as expected without doing accurate and lengthy research first a bad thing? Is that so bad for the hobby? I hear of TONS of people setting up a Biocube, throwing LEDS over top of it, dry rock, 10 fish, and wild SPS flown in from god knows where completely killing everything off and then coming on the forum to complain and rant. Why are my SPS pale? Why doesn't my tank look like yours? Why are my SPS/LPS melting? Why is my acrylic tank melting? Those are the type of people that are told from forums just like this, LFS's that LEDs are the miracle cure and future of reef keeping when they just are not.

Sure, I have seen hundreds of tanks that do just fine with LED's. I am not knocking them. Those are the owners that have either been in the hobby for a lengthly amount of time and know what their doing, or have really done their homework and bought the appropriate amount of LED's to properly cover their tank. But for 1 successful LED tank I have seen a thousand successful MH/T5 tanks.

End rant.

 

[billyzbear]

I didn't read all the rants.
I started with mh and t5's. Later, just t5's. A few years ago I started replacing t5's with leds. I got to a point where I only have two t5 bulbs. At this point I'm not liking the growth and color of my sps. I have tried alot of different leds trying to get the growth and color back. Its been all DIY so I haven't spent as much as others...
I love the color of royal blue leds and have desided to have 5 rows of them and 4 rows of t5's. Hopefully this will get me the results I'm looking for or it's back to all t5's.
In my testing I noticed that some zoa just don't grow well under leds. Lps don't seem to care unless you hit them with too much. With sps it's very hard to keep the color and to get good growth. UV leds causes color shifting with all coral when you have alot of them. From leds the light does not seem to "bend". Like when my clown goes out she leaves a shadow and on the sides of my sps is shadowed. It hard to explain but t5's seem to fill in and around much better.

 

[Spslvr]

Im not sure how far you go back, but in the old days mh were not that great either. the highest k bulb was 6500k, it was stark yellow! great for caulerpa and some nice brown acros [for those that had them.] ppl experimented with adding some 03 actinic t8 and that was the combo that worked, then they started bringing out 10000k and later still 20000k
my point is that mh were not just easy, we had to learn how to get the best results and also corals like sps were not really a huge market. to a certain extent it was sps keepers quest for color that drove the lighting revolution.

In regards to led i actually like em, the problem i see is that most led fixtures are grossly underpowered as a single unit and ppl put 2 radions for instance over a 5 ft tank and wonder why their sps dont shine, the fact is you do need alot of led to be successful.... but they do work.

 

[Wazzel]

I have seen quite a few LED users complain about the results, but never turn up the fixture. It is like complaining a sports car does not go fast, but never getting past 3rd gear.

As far as the rant, new hobbiest kill lots of thing if they do not do their research, go to fast, keep things beyond their skill level, etc. LED lighting is neither the culprit or cure all for inexperience.

 

[jackson6745]

I will not go LED on my tank because:

1)the initial cost is way too expensive
2)To have the proper coverage I will not be much more efficient than running T5 or halide.
3)The results are inconsistent at best
4)Resale value is horrible do to the changing models constantly coming out
5)The results with T5 and halide is just too damn good.
6) I believe no matter which LED I choose, the same flaw will be present...... An intense beam of light illuminating my corals from a steep angle coming from a small diode. Essentially I am overexposing half of the coral, and under lighting the other half. No optic can fix this problem.

 

[mhucasey]

I will not go LED on my tank because:

1)the initial cost is way too expensive
2)To have the proper coverage I will not be much more efficient than running T5 or halide.
3)The results are inconsistent at best
4)Resale value is horrible do to the changing models constantly coming out
5)The results with T5 and halide is just too damn good.
6) I believe no matter which LED I choose, the same flaw will be present...... An intense beam of light illuminating my corals from a steep angle coming from a small diode. Essentially I am overexposing half of the coral, and under lighting the other half. No optic can fix this problem.

You sum it up nicely

 

[mhucasey]

I have seen quite a few LED users complain about the results, but never turn up the fixture. It is like complaining a sports car does not go fast, but never getting past 3rd gear.

As far as the rant, new hobbiest kill lots of thing if they do not do their research, go to fast, keep things beyond their skill level, etc. LED lighting is neither the culprit or cure all for inexperience.

New hobbyists do kill a lot of things because of inexperience, but the point is that with the traditional light systems, its pretty hard for even a new hobbyist to muck it up. Giving a new hobbyist instructions regarding percentage output of different colored LEDs, ramping profiles, and color temp profiles is just asking for screw ups.

I can't count how many threads Ive seen that go something like: "I don't know if I have my LED set correctly, I have the blues at X% and The whites at Y%". What does that even mean?! I started my current tank with LEDs, and i kept fumbling around with low percentages. I had kept the percentages low before that because everyone warned about cooking corals. Later I found out that the particular LED system I had tested very poorly for par. After that, I ended up cranking them up to 100 and the corals grew a bit. They never colored up and they had horrible pale patches and die off wherever there were shadows. If I was forced to run those exact LEDS again, I would buy 2-3 times as many and then I probably would probably have better luck. Savings would be nonexistent compared to the T5s I run now, but I could get coral to grow better than before.

 

[Spslvr]

i think alot of people were sold the idea that led save $$ on power, this is/was nothing more than a sales pitch. is the crux of your rant $$ related? They are somewhat energy efficient in the fact they dont run anywhere near as hot as mh but if you buy leds because you think it will reduce your power bill you have fallen for nothing more than the sales pitch.. fact is leds are the most expensive way to light a reeftank but if utilised properly and not being frugal they work.

And yes you do read newbies asking what percentage they should set their light to, but i also read questions from newbies like how do i get my kh up, or why wont my calcium drop below 500, or how do setup my dosing pump, or help i mixed to much salt into my ro drum what should i do now?????

 

[Moser]

That is what the OP was getting at - when people fail at a reef tank, animals die, and the keeper gives up. That's bad for our hobby.

But for 1 successful LED tank I have seen a thousand successful MH/T5 tanks.

End rant.

That's more a function of MH users tending to be more experienced and new reefers tending to be told to use new tech LED.

I think if you asked Scott, Greg or Biggles to start again with Led's of their choice, they'd still come up with TOTM tanks. That is what Reefbloke has done. He's had success with all types of lighting..... Now if only Steve Weast would start another tank with LED, it would probably end the discussion!.

Led tanks are different, but so too are t5 tanks from MH tanks. They all have their merits and work!

IMO, and coming from Radium 400W+ T5, T5 with Blue LED adds another dimension of colour. I use ATI hybrids. They rely mainly on T5 and the LED can be used as either main or supplement. This fixture cannot be beaten. I include my old Giesemann Sepctra with Radium in that equation too!

Mo

 

[JammyBirch]

I think a lot of people on here are old crotches that bought into LEDs early on and got burned. The new LEDs are full spectrum and have great potential. To each his own but newbies, like me, that don't want a friggn' chiller running in there living room and do want to talk to other users with the same fixtures are the smart ones. So talking %'s, distance from surface and optics makes sense.

What i don't get from all of this is why buying the latest and greatest technology keeps coming up...who buys a new fixture because it's new, if there current system is doing just fine? This hobby is expensive enough, you're supposed to be paying attention to what in the tank no over it...

 

[Wazzel]

New hobbyists do kill a lot of things because of inexperience, but the point is that with the traditional light systems, its pretty hard for even a new hobbyist to muck it up. Giving a new hobbyist instructions regarding percentage output of different colored LEDs, ramping profiles, and color temp profiles is just asking for screw ups.

I can't count how many threads Ive seen that go something like: "I don't know if I have my LED set correctly, I have the blues at X% and The whites at Y%". What does that even mean?! I started my current tank with LEDs, and i kept fumbling around with low percentages. I had kept the percentages low before that because everyone warned about cooking corals. Later I found out that the particular LED system I had tested very poorly for par. After that, I ended up cranking them up to 100 and the corals grew a bit. They never colored up and they had horrible pale patches and die off wherever there were shadows. If I was forced to run those exact LEDS again, I would buy 2-3 times as many and then I probably would probably have better luck. Savings would be nonexistent compared to the T5s I run now, but I could get coral to grow better than before.

I do not deny that LEDs are more difficult to dial in. I have seen new hobbyist ask lots of questions about the traditional lighting systems too.

I understand people had bad experiences with LED, I am not. My experience has been quite good so far. From my experience they are not near the monster people make them out to be. I have been keeping tanks long enough and have enough patients to know and wait out the months it might take for positive results to come through. IMO people get discourage when they make a change and they do not get fast results.

Other than the coverage issue, which IMO is real, but way over exaggerated there are some issues. Those other issues are not hardware, but operational issues. The knowledge is coming. As an LED user I will say, if you want a radium looking tank do not get an LED unit. They are not set up to run that way. To get good results from the AI Hydra52 or Radion G3 Pro you need to run the power up on all channels.

 

[Chris Lakies]

Honestly i don't know why this debate is still going on. Its been proven that you can grow coral with any method LED/MH/T5/PC/VHO........ it all comes down to what you prefer. Any one of these has a learning curve for a new hobbyist.

Personally i've had best results with T5's so it is what i use.