LED or Metal Halide

[hart24601]

From another thread Adam from battlecorals said he can’t really tell a difference in growth between the two, his income depends on growing corals fast so that was pretty much the definitive post for me as he uses all 3 lighting types on the same systems.

 

[gguertin145]

I’ve never heard leds grow faster... supposedly price for energy and replacement bulbs were benefits.

I played the game but I am tired of an extremely expensive light having a led or two go out eventually causing the whole puck to be over driven and fail. Unless your selling them or cannot control the heat I can’t find a reason to even like them anymore.

 

[OutLawX77]

LEDs no or little heat
Tuneible light frks. low electric
Halides HEAT monsters, I guess if you live up north, this would be ok in the cold winter mths. Higher electric bills.
Summer, more electrical bills, because the AC needed to cool that over sized tank heater in that room.
just my 2cents

 

[CanuckReefer]

Was T5 exclusive, now run a hybrid LED and T5. Like some others do....best of both and swear by it. MH has it's advantages all the same...just seems more work involved to my eyes..

 

[gguertin145]

You don’t use ac in your house down south. I thought some of you ran two of them even.

 

[CanuckReefer]

I’ve never heard leds grow faster... supposedly price for energy and replacement bulbs were benefits.

I played the game but I am tired of an extremely expensive light having a led or two go out eventually causing the whole puck to be over driven and fail. Unless your selling them or cannot control the heat I can’t find a reason to even like them anymore.

You've never used T5's ? Only MH?

 

[gguertin145]

I like t5s, I also like the look of t5s with led but a 6ft tank means at least 3 expensive units and almost anyone I’ve had really only lasted 18 months to 2 years before problems.

to be fair I said screw it and bought a supply of 10 years worth of vho actinics and have been running 400w radiums for a year again

 

[blasterman]

I still can't get through these threads without wondering how the entire mainstream lighting industry globally is ditching T5 and metal halide and getting massive electrical savings and yet a handful of guys with salt water tanks are magically working with different physics.

I remember when the first AI blues hit the market, reefers turned them up too high and bleached corals...and then came to the conclusion LEDs were inferior to MH.....because they turned them up too high.

I've ran countless halide bulbs, t5s, built my own LED rigs, etc. The only reason LED reef fixtures are expensive is reefers keep demanding features that have high markup.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

This is not based on look or what your eyes can see except growth. Can you get better growth from a LED or Metal Halide?

I have no experience with the really expensive G5 xr30s. Or Halides. I’ve had T5s up until now.

thank you for your experience.

On my 75g I switch from 2 250w MH to 2 AI Hydra 32. I saw no slow down in growth at all. Coral color greatly improved with the switch to LED lighting.

 

[Kfactor]

Was T5 exclusive, now run a hybrid LED and T5. Like some others do....best of both and swear by it. MH has it's advantages all the same...just seems more work involved to my eyes..

More work with mh? How do you figure that ?

 

[Bpb]

 

[Bpb]

Growth, shape, skeletal density, overall heartiness? I gotta give the nod to Halides. I think if someone has the means to manage the operational shortcomings of them, they are still an outstanding choice which will give the best of all worlds when it comes to coral health, if paired with the correct reflector/height to give an appropriate intensity and spread. You CAN misuse metal halides and torch the tank. I've personally done it and seen others do it.

I still prefer to see 10-14k metal halides hung nice and high for sharp shimmer and even spread for the bulk of the day. This coming from a current LED user

 

[CanuckReefer]

More work with mh? How do you figure that ?

Mitigating heat , changing lamps out every 6 to 12 months, excessive power consumption to name a few....ya thats work....

 

[vanpire]

To each his own. I run fans and they turn on automatically when the tank gets to warm, just like the heaters turn on when my tank gets too cold. There isn’t a lot of work.

I change my bulbs once every 18 months. It takes me longer to feed my fish than to change three bulbs. Not really hard or time consuming. Cleaning algae from the glass, now that’s time consuming.

I wanted to go to LEDs. I want the savings. I switched as many house light fixtures from compact fluorescent to LEDs. There is significant savings there.

However, I did the calculations for aquarium LEDs for radions and the number of fixtures required to do the same as halides requires more power than I thought, and while there were savings, it wasn’t as much as I expected and hoped.

But I am willing to experiment. Bought a 60” ATI WiFi powermodule for a 625XXL I am setting up and see how it performs. Can’t see the cost benefit of going all LEDs with radions.

Now, I am carefully monitoring other options like Orphek light bars and Phillips Coral Care and might experiment sometimes later.

But in my main tank, still Halides until I find the right cost benefit equations.

 

[CanuckReefer]

To each his own. I run fans and they turn on automatically when the tank gets to warm, just like the heaters turn on when my tank gets too cold. There isn’t a lot of work.

I change my bulbs once every 18 months. It takes me longer to feed my fish than to change three bulbs. Not really hard or time consuming. Cleaning algae from the glass, now that’s time consuming.

I wanted to go to LEDs. I want the savings. I switched as many house light fixtures from compact fluorescent to LEDs. There is significant savings there.

However, I did the calculations for aquarium LEDs for radions and the number of fixtures required to do the same requires more power than I thought, and while there were savings, it wasn’t as much as I expected and hoped.

But I am willing to experiment. Bought a 60” ATI WiFi powermodule for a 625XXL I am setting up and see how it performs. Can’t see the cost benefit of going all LEDs with radions.

Now, I am carefully monitoring other options like Orphek light bars and Phillips Coral Care and might experiment sometimes later.

But in my main tank, still Halides until I find the right cost benefit equations.

Oh I agree to each their own. You run fans as well in order to keep the heat away....just seems like more work to me....if it performs for you then great. I'm not knocking it , just simply adding up what it takes to make it all happen.

 

[vanpire]

Oh I agree to each their own. You run fans as well in order to keep the heat away....just seems like more work to me....if it performs for you then great. I'm not knocking it , just simply adding up what it takes to make it all happen.

Doesn’t many LED modules have fans that need to be replaced every so often? I have one fan that I install and it runs for years with me doing anything, except to clean the accumulated dust. There are many fans required on multiple LED units that require maintenance, even if only to clean accumulated dust on the fans. I don’t have LEDs but I have laptops which requires me to clean their fans and replace them when they get noisy.

 

[rtparty]

Facts are facts. PAR per watt barely puts LEDs ahead. However, the spectrums are not the same. If people in this hobby ever got to see the true spectral plots for LEDs it would blow their mind how much leeway the marketing teams take. To be totally fair, even some halide and T5s are over smoothing their plots but nothing like an LED.

If you went from 500w of halides to 200w of LEDs, you were either severely over lighting your tank or you are now severely under lighting it. That's just a fact. You may not see it today or next month but you will see it down the road.

I went from 180ish watts of LEDs to 500w of halides just recently. I was severely under lighting in my case. Guess how much hotter the room is? It's not. Guess how much the water temp has increased? It hasn't. Electric bill? Nothing crazy. Maybe even dropped a little? Charging a Tesla alters my numbers so tough to tell.

Changing bulbs every 12 months is tough? Hope a pump never needs cleaning.

And here's the most fun fact of all...a watt is a watt. LEDs just put most of their heat into a heatsink and blow it out in your room. My Reef Brite pendants run pretty cool compared to halides of old. I can touch and leave my hand on the pendant for quite a while.

The halide myths are crazy these days but it's not surprising really. The hobby as a whole has been over sensationalized on almost every front. LED marketers have had millions of reasons to put out a false narrative.

 

[Deep]

I still can't get through these threads without wondering how the entire mainstream lighting industry globally is ditching T5 and metal halide and getting massive electrical savings and yet a handful of guys with salt water tanks are magically working with different physics.

I remember when the first AI blues hit the market, reefers turned them up too high and bleached corals...and then came to the conclusion LEDs were inferior to MH.....because they turned them up too high.

I've ran countless halide bulbs, t5s, built my own LED rigs, etc. The only reason LED reef fixtures are expensive is reefers keep demanding features that have high markup.

So you are saying LEDs can bleach corals right ? Inspite of the mainstream industry and the physics ?

 

[flyfisherman]

I love led vs. MH threads! Really tough to compare, because there are many parameters that effect how a type of light works in a given tank. That said- my Current observations from running radiums on overdriven ballasts for 3-4yrs.

-i enjoy the noisy ballasts. Something about the raw sound from the energy produced.
-the shimmer is unreal with halides. I mark 100+par swings in the same spot from shimmer.
-I color up pieces from people at lower par than they were running with leds.

 

[xiaoxiy]

I used to be a big halide fan, however the light bleed and heat got to me. As a result, I swapped from a Pheonix 250W on M80 + 4x T5s (~470 Watts) to 2x Reefi Duo Extremes (~292 Watts). My fish room is much cooler, my tank runs much cooler and most importantly, my growth stayed stable.

I think Adam from Battlecorals and Therman are great examples of how LEDs can grow acropora just as well as halides.