Yes, I said it! LED lighting is bad for our hobby.
Before some people go ballistic, yes LED can grow corals and yes its perfect for supplemental lighting or fish only, but for reef tanks, it's causing so many problems.
I've been doing this hobby for 13 years. I started with MH lighting, along with power compacts, and T5's. My tanks were always great, growth was amazing, corals were happy and rarely lost one.
Then, somewhere around 6-7 years ago, I got on the LED band wagon and changed everything to LED. Things changed, lost corals and corals not happy.
I went through approximately 5 brands of LED's, with multiple versions of each one, finally ending with Radion Gen 3's trying to find the best LED lighting. I've spent no less then 25k+ on different lighting systems all to find the perfect system. Never in that time did I have the simplicity, colors or growth then I did with my very first MH system.
I recently just went back to a MH/T5 combo and not going to look back. It's amazing the almost instant growth and coloration I got with the MH. I'm ticked off at all the money I've dropped on lighting systems when the original technology was and still is the best for SPS.
During that time with the LED's, I always thought it was something else. Chasing numbers! My phosphates and nitrates were to high, my alk was to low, magnesium was off, my PH was to low. Now I need a CO2 scrubber, dose carbon, this and that. My first few years in the hobby, I hardly tested, just did water changes and my tanks always looked good and simply worked.
Folks, think about this. Look at the forums. Hundreds and thousands of posts about LED lighting. Everyday, new posts about LED one way or another. Big red flag???
If your on the forums, your either a fanatic (like me) or a newbie trying to figure out what the hell your doing. Most of the posts about LED are, I have no PE, colors are fading, wilting away, RTN, or dying.
Think back before your very first fish tank when you knew nothing. Now maybe your LFS is setting up your first reef tank. They sell you these cool LED lights with Disco lights and lighting storms. Cool right. No!! You know nothing about about your aquarium, much less about spectrum, intensity, etc. You start playing with it and you like it brighter, so you turn the whites all the way up. Anybody who's had LED's knows, you just fried your corals. There are way to many other issues with reef aquariums to have to worry about the lights. They are simply lights for goodness sake, ***. Its not that complicated.
Before the LED rage, you could buy a basic aquarium, throw a power compact or T5 on the tank, do your weekly water changes and for a lot of people it worked. Plain and simple. A lot of people for years had pretty successful tanks doing just that.
Now, with LED, it's always something. Spectrum, intensity, duration,blues, whites, yellows, reds, UV, spread, shading, single point diode, blending, wide angle, reflectors, and hot spots, just to name a few.:crazy1: Most of the people who have had success are very experienced and have spent a lot of times on these forums researching the best settings etc. Again, its just freaking lights, it shouldn't be this complicated.
If you are brand new to the hobby and all of your corals quickly die, how long are you going to be in this hobby? Even for people who've been in it for a while, but seem to keep having problems, how long are they going to continue throwing money down the drain before getting frustrated and quitting?
I have no doubt that at some point, LED will be the light source of the future, its just not there yet. And until it is, I will no longer be its Guinea pig.
So I say again, LED's are bad for our Hobby!
Before some people go ballistic, yes LED can grow corals and yes its perfect for supplemental lighting or fish only, but for reef tanks, it's causing so many problems.
I've been doing this hobby for 13 years. I started with MH lighting, along with power compacts, and T5's. My tanks were always great, growth was amazing, corals were happy and rarely lost one.
Then, somewhere around 6-7 years ago, I got on the LED band wagon and changed everything to LED. Things changed, lost corals and corals not happy.
I went through approximately 5 brands of LED's, with multiple versions of each one, finally ending with Radion Gen 3's trying to find the best LED lighting. I've spent no less then 25k+ on different lighting systems all to find the perfect system. Never in that time did I have the simplicity, colors or growth then I did with my very first MH system.
I recently just went back to a MH/T5 combo and not going to look back. It's amazing the almost instant growth and coloration I got with the MH. I'm ticked off at all the money I've dropped on lighting systems when the original technology was and still is the best for SPS.
During that time with the LED's, I always thought it was something else. Chasing numbers! My phosphates and nitrates were to high, my alk was to low, magnesium was off, my PH was to low. Now I need a CO2 scrubber, dose carbon, this and that. My first few years in the hobby, I hardly tested, just did water changes and my tanks always looked good and simply worked.
Folks, think about this. Look at the forums. Hundreds and thousands of posts about LED lighting. Everyday, new posts about LED one way or another. Big red flag???
If your on the forums, your either a fanatic (like me) or a newbie trying to figure out what the hell your doing. Most of the posts about LED are, I have no PE, colors are fading, wilting away, RTN, or dying.
Think back before your very first fish tank when you knew nothing. Now maybe your LFS is setting up your first reef tank. They sell you these cool LED lights with Disco lights and lighting storms. Cool right. No!! You know nothing about about your aquarium, much less about spectrum, intensity, etc. You start playing with it and you like it brighter, so you turn the whites all the way up. Anybody who's had LED's knows, you just fried your corals. There are way to many other issues with reef aquariums to have to worry about the lights. They are simply lights for goodness sake, ***. Its not that complicated.
Before the LED rage, you could buy a basic aquarium, throw a power compact or T5 on the tank, do your weekly water changes and for a lot of people it worked. Plain and simple. A lot of people for years had pretty successful tanks doing just that.
Now, with LED, it's always something. Spectrum, intensity, duration,blues, whites, yellows, reds, UV, spread, shading, single point diode, blending, wide angle, reflectors, and hot spots, just to name a few.:crazy1: Most of the people who have had success are very experienced and have spent a lot of times on these forums researching the best settings etc. Again, its just freaking lights, it shouldn't be this complicated.
If you are brand new to the hobby and all of your corals quickly die, how long are you going to be in this hobby? Even for people who've been in it for a while, but seem to keep having problems, how long are they going to continue throwing money down the drain before getting frustrated and quitting?
I have no doubt that at some point, LED will be the light source of the future, its just not there yet. And until it is, I will no longer be its Guinea pig.
So I say again, LED's are bad for our Hobby!
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