Lighting experiment

[bwrag]

Hi I'm Blake I'm new here I'm currently running a 75 reef with ati t5. Dec/jan I'm upgrading to a 300 dd. I have everything I need but am second guessing my lighting now. The plan was to run 3 400w mh cozmels suns w/ 10k ushio bulbs. Atitinc is 2 bml strips. Now I'm thinking about going complete led. So my plan is setup tank cycle and then run my mh without actinic on left and a radion G3 pro on right and middle empty. Place a frag of equal size and shape and off same colony, on the bottom directly under each light. Let them go for a month take out measure then go with winner. Please give me your thoughts.

Before anyone says
i chose radion because I feel it's at the top. I don't want this to turn into this led is the best.
Not doing t5 already am and don't care for it. It grows has nice color but not the best of either
I would really like to limit it to a month because this will be in my living room and I think that's about as long as I'll be able to run this and keep my wife happy

 

[afamousjohnson]

Im a halide guy that loves leds. Think this will be cool to see and something many will be interested in seeing

 

[mfinn]

Interesting.

One thing you need to do with the frag under the Radion is to run the acclimation program for 3-4 weeks to make sure the frag isn't light stressed right out of the gate.

 

[bwrag]

I gave that some consideration. my plan was to start off with 1 hr of light on day one and add 15minutes per day. do you think this would be to quick. By the way if anyone is intrested I did the ROUGH math on how long it would take to even out cost wise

It would take roughly 5 years to equal out cost of running MH ( energy/yearly bulbs replacment/chiller energy) vs cost of buying 6 entire fixtures. This is a rough pill to swallow when in 5 years these current fixtures will be dirt cheap or obselet.

 

[mfinn]

I'm not sure how you would be able to acclimate the one frag under the led so they have equal time. I just know the coral needs acclimation.



As far as the figures on how long it would take to balance out cost of buying new expensive fixtures.

I see it this way.
At the second month of using all Radions over both tanks and removing MH, VHO, and T5 lighting and the chiller , my wife said the electric bill went down $60 per month. $720 per year. 3 of my fixtures were $600 each and the 4th was $50 from a lfs raffle.
Then add in the cost of not buying 3 Radium 250 watt bulbs and 4 - 72" VHO bulbs on one tank and 6 - 24" T5 bulbs every year and my fixtures are paid for in much less than 5 years.