Changing from Leds to MH for 36x36x20 cube, need help

[jda]

I was just wondering what Ardeus' thoughts were. He clearly thought about this a lot... and while I have no love for ANY current LED setup and their performance relative to what I have now, I pay attention so and ask questions to people with well-formed thoughts so that I am able to change if/when the time comes. I am not as much of a dogmatic dinosaur as I might seem. It is these type of questions to the well-thought that convince me more and more that what I have is still best for me. If only it were easy to separate the well-thought from the others.

Personally, I just run MH on/off with no supplements. I am Ok with this... I am never home at the same time every day and like to see my tanks look the same all the time. If I was in front of my tank all the time, I might like some ramping, but still... maybe not. TBH, I am getting sick of rebooting every 36 months from all of the growth (this sounds bad, right?), so perhaps 5 or 6 hours of MH and some ramp time might yield 48-60 months between rebooting with sticks touching and growing out of the water.

 

[Jeepguy242]

See it works!!!!

“Need “ I “need” ramping. Lol.

Me , if I went MH again, Id go a W/b. Led Long low ramp, MH big par push mid day.

I had just 3 250 watt radiums for 11 years but I wanted something to leave on longer as the halides came on after I went to work and off before I got home. I could only enjoy the tank on my days off.

I added the reefbrite about a year ago. The cheaper actinic tech led strip. It’s awesome the amount of pop it adds to the radiums and by itself is impressive the amount it makes the corals fluoresce

 

[Jeepguy242]

I was just wondering what Ardeus' thoughts were. He clearly thought about this a lot... and while I have no love for ANY current LED setup and their performance relative to what I have now, I pay attention so and ask questions to people with well-formed thoughts so that I am able to change if/when the time comes. I am not as much of a dogmatic dinosaur as I might seem. It is these type of questions to the well-thought that convince me more and more that what I have is still best for me. If only it were easy to separate the well-thought from the others.

Personally, I just run MH on/off with no supplements. I am Ok with this... I am never home at the same time every day and like to see my tanks look the same all the time. If I was in front of my tank all the time, I might like some ramping, but still... maybe not. TBH, I am getting sick of rebooting every 36 months from all of the growth (this sounds bad, right?), so perhaps 5 or 6 hours of MH and some ramp time might yield 48-60 months between rebooting with sticks touching and growing out of the water.

I take frag gifts if you wanna send sommadat growth my way


Lol

 

[Ardeus]

I was just wondering what Ardeus' thoughts were. He clearly thought about this a lot... and while I have no love for ANY current LED setup and their performance relative to what I have now, I pay attention so and ask questions to people with well-formed thoughts so that I am able to change if/when the time comes. I am not as much of a dogmatic dinosaur as I might seem. It is these type of questions to the well-thought that convince me more and more that what I have is still best for me. If only it were easy to separate the well-thought from the others.

Personally, I just run MH on/off with no supplements. I am Ok with this... I am never home at the same time every day and like to see my tanks look the same all the time. If I was in front of my tank all the time, I might like some ramping, but still... maybe not. TBH, I am getting sick of rebooting every 36 months from all of the growth (this sounds bad, right?), so perhaps 5 or 6 hours of MH and some ramp time might yield 48-60 months between rebooting with sticks touching and growing out of the water.

I thought a lot about this according to my own requisites, which may be different from yours.

I know that MH, T5 and leds all can grow coral.

MH and even worse, leds, without suplementation cause shading problems which are a problem for tanks with sticks.

Focustronic has a led solution where the leds rotate with time, but it still needs suplementation from T5 to be visually appealing.

I know how good the MH and T5 look, I have had it over my tank.

I know how great the leds are at recreating changing light over time, I have them and I love it.

I want the best of those worlds and nowadays it can easily be done... but it hasn't.

In nature we have a big point light with a warm tone (the Sun) and a big blue dome that casts diffuse light that is further diffused by the water. MH + T5 (Blue) do just that.

Led pads fail to emulate the Sun because they are scattered over a big area resulting in a multitude of light streaks vibrating on every surface. Dense led matrix manages to get close enough to a point light and the results show.

There is still the problem of water movement on the surface: the surface of our tanks look nothing like the sea surface because we depend on pumps for gas exchange. As far as I know, there's not much we can do about it.

Concerning leds replacing T5's, Maxspect has done it with the Recurve's wings. They need to be stronger and with a more balanced spectre.

I have special challenges/opportunities because of the shape of my tank (36"x36"x20"). It's a difficult area to cover with a single fixture, but having 2 fixtures will allow me to try increase the sense of depth in the tank by putting a slightly bluer light in the back of the tank.