SPS and light

[wrestle1952]

I had to break down my tank a couple of years ago. I retired and relocated back to the SF Bay Area from San Diego. I am asking this question in this forum since many long term SPS hobbyist are here. I want to set another tank back up strictly SPS again. I planned on going multiple T5 bulb or metal halide. I've gone into several reef shops and staff there claim LED's are the way to go. I did try them during my time in San Diego. Colorful acros under my MH or T5 colored up quite nicely and grew at phenomenal rates. Under the LED's they browned and the growth was very minimal. I've walked into local shops and looked at mixed reefs. I watched a table acropora over several months time. I see white tips of growth but it is MINIMAL. I looked at other forums and LED users are claiming fantastic growth and color and their results are superior to metal halide. I find that hard to believe. The tanks I have seen do look colorful but again I don't see growth as claimed. One person went from LED's back to MH due to color and growth. Pet shops will push their merchandise and will go to what's hot. I want what's best for SPS corals. Has anyone here switched to strictly LED and been happy>

 

[Moser]

ATI T5 or Radium- take your pick.
The cost saving claims of LED are non existent.
LED's are not consistently easy enough for everybody to get good results.
They don't seem to pull the subtle pigments like T5 can.
They pull much more fluorescent green pigments out of corals than other light sources seem to, so all your nice corals fluoresce much more.

I have ATI T5/Led hybrid, which is fantastic!

Mo

 

[danrobberg]

I recently added some t5 to supplement my led lights. If you can really fine tune the led's which can take a lot of time and be difficult you still have to worry about shading. I think if you were to go with led you might need twice what the manufacturer recommends. I do think that led plus t5 will be very popular moving forward. After adding the t5 I can see parts of my corals that were shaded with just led and there is almost no pigment there. I'm hoping the t5 can bring color back. It is also hard to dial in the intensity. I did t want to nuke my frags so I started out at 40 percent but my Oregon tort and purple monster are pretty brown now. If you increase the power to quickly you can bleach the corals very fast. I think the heat loss from led over metal halide is a much bigger benefit than power consumption. If I were to do it all over I would probably get a metal halide with t5 fixture over the led. I have a ghl Mitras which costs $1000 and the wife wasn't to pleased when I had to spend even more money to supplement that light with t5.