My Lighting Bake-Off

[ca1ore]

I've grown weary of the debate between MH and LED. As a long-time reefer (30 yrs) I was a MH user for 20 years and have been an exclusive LED user now for 3. My experiences are that both can successfully grow SPS; however, in the recent re-do of my fish room I have frag tank capacity to spare. So, I have decide to do my own lighting bake off. One side of the Deep Blue Frag 60 is my current lighting combo - a reefbeeders photon plus kessil 360 - the other is a phoenix 150 HQI DE with proper ballast. Water is only 8" deep, so 150 will suffice (and LED's dialed down quite low). I currently have six identical frags on both sides, and will be acquiring some of the more 'difficult' corals over the next month. Obviously water quality will be identical, and I have setup dual MP10's to approximate flow as closely as possible. Though I doubt this will change any dogmatic views (and it's a sample size of one), it will be fun and enlightening for me.

What's immediately obvious, and hardly a surprise, it how different the same coral looks under the different lighting. Not better, or worse, just different. Will be interesting to see how growth and coloration proceeds.

 

[Joche]

Are equating the PAR between the two tanks or going 100% for both?

I'm cheering for the MH, though I can't use them for the high heat high energy costs were I'm located. I still like the "look" of them better although Kessil's are awesome.

 

[JerSaint]

Awesome! Post a bunch of pics. I will be following along!


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[GSMclowns]

Is there any light spill from one side into the other side?

 

[anthonys51]

You should use radion g4 Kessils are so 2016


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[ca1ore]

Is there any light spill from one side into the other side?

Excellent point ..... no I have been very careful to avoid that. There is an unavoidable 'blended' band in the center, but that will be unused.

 

[ca1ore]

Are equating the PAR between the two tanks or going 100% for both?

MH is binary, either on or off. LED's I can and will adjust to match PAR (getting the meter this coming weekend).

 

[ca1ore]

You should use radion g4 Kessils are so 2016

Yeah, maybe so given the numbers of them in the for sale forum. I've invested heavily in the Kessils, so like it or not that's my LED entrant.

 

[anthonys51]

Lol


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[GSMclowns]

LED or T5 or MH can grow corals just fine. Between I and my friends we have tried so many combination of lights. A single coral will look very different under each of these 3 main light sources. We tried Oregon Tort before under 3 different tanks with 3 different light sources. The MH and LED tanks have the same sump and same skimmer, Cal reactor and all that. T5 tank is separate and dosing Cal and Alk.

Under MH: Oregon Tort is solid blue, everywhere from the base to growing tip.
Under LED: Oregon Tort is solid blue but it is more transparent? a bit lighter blue than under MH.
Under 5T: Oregon Tort's base is darker blue with a tiny hint of purple? and the tip is much brighter blue. almost neon blue when it is in good condition.

Growth is kind of the same for all 3 light sources. Nothing really stand out.

 

[mlew]

I'm looking forward to see the results of this. I have fond memories of running a 400 watt MH, but don't ever miss the heat.

 

[Dhoggs]

Following along as well

 

[scar79]

Hi Simon, tagging along!

 

[organism]

The thing is with LED's it's all about spectrum. If you ran your experiment under 6 different Kessils you'd get pretty varied results depending on what you had them tuned to. On a side note I wouldn't visually compare the brightness to figure out the LED settings compared to the other lights, PAR meter is the way to go.

 

[zsuman101]

ive been on the fence for awhile now, my display reef in the living room is a g4 radion zeo reef, only using the leds cause i cant hide the halide fixtures . however, my frag tank is a zeo tank also with t5, radions. but i just ordered some radium bulbs from the lfs. been doing this since we used to make our own skimmers n stuff. nothing works better than halides, and in the halide world nothing beats radiums. so the frag tank will be getting an old school upgrade for sure, saving up to get a giesmann halide t5 fixture for living room 1000$ no ballasts no bulbs what a joke, but its the only fixture my little buttercup will allow...... girls....good luck.... zsu

 

[ca1ore]

The thing is with LED's it's all about spectrum. If you ran your experiment under 6 different Kessils you'd get pretty varied results depending on what you had them tuned to. On a side note I wouldn't visually compare the brightness to figure out the LED settings compared to the other lights, PAR meter is the way to go.

I'm not aiming for scientific rigor or statistical significance, just my own curiosity /enlightenment (pun intended) beyond what I 'think' the answer will be. There are always people who will poke holes in any experiment if it dares to deviate from their dogmatic views.

BTW, it's going to take a while.

 

[RedStangGA]

Along for the ride. I've bounced back and forth so often on lighting for my 220 that it still doesn't have water in it lol! Did finally settle on 2 AP700's with some T5 to help. But I'm curious to see how this turns out.

 

[jda]

Do you have the room to grow them into colonies? This is where some huge differences with shadowing, growth and color can occur and about when even the diehard LED people want to start adding in other lighting. I am talking softball, or larger. As I have said a lot, frags are easy.

Not that you need yet another thing... but Radium 20K is available and pretty good in 150W HQI.

 

[ca1ore]

Do I sense 'excuses' already :lol:

 

[ca1ore]

Do you have the room to grow them into colonies? This is where some huge differences with shadowing, growth and color can occur and about when even the diehard LED people want to start adding in other lighting. I am talking softball, or larger. As I have said a lot, frags are easy.

Not that you need yet another thing... but Radium 20K is available and pretty good in 150W HQI.

In order, yes , that's why I'm doing this to see for myself, and looked but couldn't find one so went with the Phoenix.