Are some led lights misleading Reefers

[sixty_reefer]

Probably something that annoys me but maybe it’s just me.

Do you find it fair play for a new led that was just developed, to use a thriving tank that has been growing for years under MH for they’re advertising?
Wouldn’t you feel a bit annoyed if you had spend months doing all the paperwork at work and your college comes and signed the paper work and took all the credit for your hard work. How does the MH would of felt? With all these new leds taking credit for they’re performance.

Not trying to discuss which ligh is best they all have there benefits but do you think it’s right way to do business, would these kind of practice be misleading the new generation of reefers.

Are we still to see a thriving tank that has been using the same led for more than 10 years?

On MH bulbs can be replaced any time you want. Shouldn’t the same practice exist on leds. Is impossible for me to find a new puck for my existent led as it has been discontinued, should leds make these available to us, whenever we want them why should we have to go and buy a new light. All I want is my 50.000 h back.

Donno just thinking out loud.

 

[Silver14SS]

How can you tell what light was used over the life of the tank?

 

[Sierra_Bravo]

Marketing. I certainly wouldn't expect them to be able to sell anything if it was pictured over a bunch of frag nubs.

I'm more annoyed that my hamburger has never looked like the picture on the menu board.

 

[ZoWhat]

I've retro'ed all my led fixtures to house the exact nanometer color spectrum I want.

Meet the 3watt 700mA LED diode:

The INDUSTRY STANDARD diode that is on many many LED fixtures like this:

Although it VOIDS the Mfgr warranty.... its super easy to access and pull the circuitboard.

The individual diodes can easily be soldered OFF the board by applying heat to the + and - terminals.

The heat of the soldering iron will NOT damage the circuitry of the board. In the dozens and dozens of times I've soldered a diode, I have not lost or damaged the fixture beyond repair.

You can then resolder ANY color spectrum diode you want. I personally have a mix of 390, 420, 460, 520m. I'm HEAVY on the 420s and 460s as that color spectrum is the most absorbed colors by corals

If you go out to eBay, there are a ton of places that sell any color diode for roughly 50cents to $1 a diode, sometimes much less if you buy a 25 pack or 50 pack.

Here's my favorite source. They're in China and takes about 3 weeks to get to you, but their quality is great

3W High Power LED Chip Light Beads White Red Blue Green IR light-emitting diode | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for 3W High Power LED Chip Light Beads White Red Blue Green IR light-emitting diode at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

Resouldeting is sooooo EASY. You just apply the soldering iron to the terminal where the leftover solder is making sure you line up + to + and - to -

I've even mistakenly soldered the diode in reverse + to - terminals. Didnt damage the board, didn't damage the diode. LED diodes are veeeeeery forgiving. The only thing that happens is that individual diode doesnt light-up when in reverse polarity

Also best practice to apply a dab of thermal paste (at any computer store ) where the new diode BASE touches the board...should already be some there but it may be dried and cracked

WhaaaaaLaaaah you can have any color spectrum you want on your retrofitted fuxture.



.

 

[Darth.Daddy12]

Lighting is just about par and spectrum. I don’t read advertising I read people’s tested par levels within a tank using said light before making it part of my list.

Ecotech to this day is the only company I’m aware of that ever did extensive testing between led and MH through the coral labs program and no one has ever had an issue using Thier results and data to setup any led light with adequate par levels and achieve amazing results. The LPS and AB+ programs have been a winning result time and again.

As for sourcing old parts.. leds are fairly simple designs where not a lot can go wrong really that can’t be fixed. Given how long an led can last while staying 70-90% max power over its life right up to the point of failure vs having to buy and replace constantly overpriced bulbs.. I personally don’t understand the concept of you concern.

At the end of the day.. they both work and I think most prefer led for two simple reasons and as a for profit company it’s wise to push product people prefer. This isn’t a companies fault it just giving us what we tell them we want.

Less power use, no need for expensive chiller.. user customizable for visual appeal while still meeting spectrum and par needs of the tank.

I think comparing t5 to led would be a fairer argument myself.

My personal preference.. t5 setups take up too much room above a tank.

MH most times will require extra equipment to utilize. But are just downright ugly in tank to look at.

I’ve never seen a home burn down cause of a faulty led or t5 setup. I’ve seen and heard of many due to MH.. the reflectors just get too hot for my taste and are hot enough to combust many common items should them come into contact with them.

Another thing I consider.. if I break the light while it’s over my tank.. what is falling into that tank? Led us just better in every way except meeting output levels of the others.. then again do I want a long term growing tank or am I in business to frag and sell for profit?

My gripe though is misleading literature. A lot of lights advertise x par at x depth.. they don’t tell you that in order to achieve that par you have to run whites at 100% which results in all sorts of things growing in the tank we don’t want.

You just have to understand.. max par advertised is likely 100% every spectrum and intensity. By the time you use a proper AB+ or LOS setup you only going to see maybe 1/2 that rating.

This is why a lot of tanks in pictures look so over powered. But really they are only running maybe 30-50% levels so need the additional to get par up with cross light diffusion zones..

 

[Darth.Daddy12]

What I would like to see is an industry standard rating for par reading.. like every company that prints Thier data has to do it using the CoralLab AB+ setting. Only then Weill we really know what we are buying before we buy it

 

[sixty_reefer]

How can you tell what light was used over the life of the tank?

Well if the pic is showing a tank with sps coming out of the water is not hard to put 1 and 1 together. Especially if the light just come out. Did they made the light and waited 6 years to release it?

 

[Silver14SS]

The original post focused on MH, was just curious how you could tell the tank contents weren't grown with T5, a different LED, or a combination of all 3.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Lighting is just about par and spectrum. I don’t read advertising I read people’s tested par levels within a tank using said light before making it part of my list.

Ecotech to this day is the only company I’m aware of that ever did extensive testing between led and MH through the coral labs program and no one has ever had an issue using Thier results and data to setup any led light with adequate par levels and achieve amazing results. The LPS and AB+ programs have been a winning result time and again.

As for sourcing old parts.. leds are fairly simple designs where not a lot can go wrong really that can’t be fixed. Given how long an led can last while staying 70-90% max power over its life right up to the point of failure vs having to buy and replace constantly overpriced bulbs.. I personally don’t understand the concept of you concern.

At the end of the day.. they both work and I think most prefer led for two simple reasons and as a for profit company it’s wise to push product people prefer. This isn’t a companies fault it just giving us what we tell them we want.

Less power use, no need for expensive chiller.. user customizable for visual appeal while still meeting spectrum and par needs of the tank.

I think comparing t5 to led would be a fairer argument myself.

My personal preference.. t5 setups take up too much room above a tank.

MH most times will require extra equipment to utilize. But are just downright ugly in tank to look at.

I’ve never seen a home burn down cause of a faulty led or t5 setup. I’ve seen and heard of many due to MH.. the reflectors just get too hot for my taste and are hot enough to combust many common items should them come into contact with them.

Another thing I consider.. if I break the light while it’s over my tank.. what is falling into that tank? Led us just better in every way except meeting output levels of the others.. then again do I want a long term growing tank or am I in business to frag and sell for profit?

My gripe though is misleading literature. A lot of lights advertise x par at x depth.. they don’t tell you that in order to achieve that par you have to run whites at 100% which results in all sorts of things growing in the tank we don’t want.

You just have to understand.. max par advertised is likely 100% every spectrum and intensity. By the time you use a proper AB+ or LOS setup you only going to see maybe 1/2 that rating.

This is why a lot of tanks in pictures look so over powered. But really they are only running maybe 30-50% levels so need the additional to get par up with cross light diffusion zones..

That’s great info right der, by no means am intending to challenge either light performance. I was just wondering that it feels wrong for a brand new light take credit for another’s light performance by just replacing it for the photo shot day

 

[sixty_reefer]

The original post focused on MH, was just curious how you could tell the tank contents weren't grown with T5, a different LED, or a combination of all 3.

Wend I was writing it I had a thread in mind that was following, so I know the light that was there before the light that was being promoted. For obvious reasons that thread shall stay unnamed. But wend you scroll the web you can see a lot of different examples.

 

[hart24601]

I mean for years most companies for the tank shots just filled the tank with large wild colonies of SPS and LPS so it’s not like many places ever really showed what their product could do to the original point. Many of those advertising pictures there really wasn’t any coral that was grown in captivity. I mean why bother growing frags for years for promo shots vs spending a couple grand wholesale to fill the tank for a few hours of pics.

 

[reefwreak]

That’s great info right der, by no means am intending to challenge either light performance. I was just wondering that it feels wrong for a brand new light take credit for another’s light performance by just replacing it for the photo shot day

Its wrong if they state "this tank was grown under this light" and it's a brand new light and a tank that couldn't possibly have been grown under that light. If it's just a staged tank for advertising material, showing the light over a tank grown under another light, and nowhere does it explicitly say that "this is what you can have/keep/grow under these lights, then it's just marketing material.

As someone stated above, if they showed a bare tank with 4 beige SPS nubs in it under their lights, it wouldn't be a very interesting marketing material, would it? "This is the tank currently growing under these lights!" :: cricket, cricket :: It takes a lot of time for corals to adapt, grow, and color up, under new lights and in a new system. Unless this "new to market" light has been in it's final stage for >6 months, which is unlikely, then they couldn't possibly show marketable results of the final product for their product advertisements (which also take time to set up, so it would increase the lead time even further between results and marketing/advertisement).

An interesting thought, and I share the sentiment that "LEDs haven't been all they're cracked up to be", but it's still very much a learning curve with no specific guide, even with Ecotech AB+. It's absolutely possible to nuke your corals with too much light on day 1, or nuke new frags if you don't put them in the shade, or put them too high, or have your light too high.

But I am looking forward to getting my 4+ years out of these $1600 lights with no added costs other than electricity.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Its wrong if they state "this tank was grown under this light" and it's a brand new light and a tank that couldn't possibly have been grown under that light. If it's just a staged tank for advertising material, showing the light over a tank grown under another light, and nowhere does it explicitly say that "this is what you can have/keep/grow under these lights, then it's just marketing material.

As someone stated above, if they showed a bare tank with 4 beige SPS nubs in it under their lights, it wouldn't be a very interesting marketing material, would it? "This is the tank currently growing under these lights!" :: cricket, cricket :: It takes a lot of time for corals to adapt, grow, and color up, under new lights and in a new system. Unless this "new to market" light has been in it's final stage for >6 months, which is unlikely, then they couldn't possibly show marketable results of the final product for their product advertisements (which also take time to set up, so it would increase the lead time even further between results and marketing/advertisement).

An interesting thought, and I share the sentiment that "LEDs haven't been all they're cracked up to be", but it's still very much a learning curve with no specific guide, even with Ecotech AB+. It's absolutely possible to nuke your corals with too much light on day 1, or nuke new frags if you don't put them in the shade, or put them too high, or have your light too high.

But I am looking forward to getting my 4+ years out of these $1600 lights with no added costs other than electricity.

Obviously they can’t say that. As it would raise questions, but isn’t a bit like the marketing for eggs for example? As there is some words they not allowed to use like “Healthy” and “good for you” etc.. but they can go around and use words like “free range” “cage free” and “organic” to mislead and still sell you a product.