Metal Halide - A fading technology?

[Troylee]

If your tank is strictly blue and green sps go for it man haha.... In my little 8 to 9 months of use I saw every blue and the majority of greens really shine all other colors red, purple, yellowish green etc suffer.... Reds went a purplish color, purples went brown, blues looked better than ever etc haha.... LEDs are there for the most part I think it's just missing a couple little things it shouldn't be long before there dialed in IMHO...

 

[dhutcheson]

I ran a DIY Cree LED set up alone for a year on my 60 gallon cube . It was a beautiful set up with 4 fully dimmable drivers and 24 crees on each of 2 pendants, each with 12 Royal Blue and 12 White. The first thing I noticed was a slight changes in color that was followed later by a decline in growth rate. Well as fate would have it something happened to my LED setup due to a storm or salt or something else that I still have not figured out. As a result I had to reinstall my Aqualight Pro that I kept as a backup and available for a quarantine and hospital tank. The Aqualight has a 150w MH compact fluorescents Actinics and 2 blue moon light LEDs. In just a few days I saw a dramatic change in bolt color and growth. As a result i am doing what others have posted I am moving to a triple threat set up MH, T5, LEDs. Due to the drop in price in fixtures I will be going to a commercial built LED set up.

 

[reefpeeper]

I thinkin about switching back to mh as well. I went from a 175w 14k evc with icecap ballast to an evolution led. I feel that when the blue leds are on everything looks great. Then when the whites are turned on back to drab. Think i will put the mh back up tomorrow

 

[reefpeeper]

You know what i have also noticed is that when leds are first put over the tank the corals look awsome. After awhile they start to look like garbage. Wonder why?

 

[Nuocmam]

I run T5's over my main tank. I plumbed in a smaller tank into it with LEDs. I experienced this color shift in sps over a period of time under LEDs while my main tank sharing the same water stayed the same. Not all sps but enough that now I only keep my softies and lps under LEDs. Just my experience. Something is missing. I don't know what. I do believe someday they will figure it out though.

 

[GR808]

Wow, guess this thread turned into an led bashing thread.

 

[BlazinNano]

Because he gets in very large, wild SPS colnies that need a ton of light to stay colored and the LEDs just cant keep up in that area. Nothing beats the PAR of properly matched bulb/ballast combo of a MH.....Well, maybe plasma but thats a whole other can of worms.

nothing beats the par? How about when I put my leds over my tank I used a par meter to get get the par 20 points lower then my t5s. I know what my unit has to sit at to get the same numbers if I need to move it down.

 

[nixer]

Wow, guess this thread turned into an led bashing thread.

i seen it coming. there is just way too many that think they know.
the truth is that most of them that do bash them never used them.
less par from leds is the funniest one thats the first ive heard that one.

 

[BlazinNano]

i seen it coming. there is just way too many that think they know.
the truth is that most of them that do bash them never used them.
less par from leds is the funniest one thats the first ive heard that one.

I don't know where people say less par. 6x39w t5 fixture mounted 6"over a 40 breeder gave me about 100 part on the sand. 120 watt led fixture mounted 14"over the water gives me 95 par on the sand. Cut my wattage almost in half. Same par.

 

[Dave3112]

I have had just about every kind of lighting in this hobby (started way back with NO fluorescent bulbs then PC and so on) I have MH with T5 actinic and will not change. Period.

 

[johnanddawn]

You know what i have also noticed is that when leds are first put over the tank the corals look awsome. After awhile they start to look like garbage. Wonder why?

my experience has been opposite this - it took a VERY long time or my sps to adapt to LED but now look better then ever

Wow, guess this thread turned into an led bashing thread.

always does - like everything else we like what we have and like to think it is the only way, i have had all types of lighting and at this point i still believe i will never go back

I have tried them all and every thing has advantages and disadvantages... For me personally I will run the triple threat like I do with mh being the main source or mh only.... That's just me..

i like your "triple threat" idea and for many it may be right, but i am LED only and am quite satisfied. when i first changed over a year ago i was considering the same sort of idea but decided if i was going to know if they would work there was only one way to go - all led

back to the op
- MH will always be here especially in large sps tanks. they fit a niche' that just can't be met yet with other options
today we just have other options when it comes to other types of tanks. we are fortunite today to not be forced into a one size fits all system
my tank is mixed garden and noone has been talking about the fact that zoas and many lps LOVE led's
the colors in my corals have never been so vibrant - i doubt anyone who saw my tank would say LED's don't work on my particular set up

 

[ronnie]

I don't know where people say less par. 6x39w t5 fixture mounted 6"over a 40 breeder gave me about 100 part on the sand. 120 watt led fixture mounted 14"over the water gives me 95 par on the sand. Cut my wattage almost in half. Same par.

I have a PAR meter coming in next week. I'll be able to compare my T5s to LEDs to see what the PAR difference is.

 

[Murfman]

I went from 400W MH to Evolution 120 W LEDs on my 30" deep tank, a year ago. My growth has been great and colors off the charts. My Red planet is bright pink to red and still supporting the green as well. Par on my sandbed is 95. with the unit 5 1/2" off the water. My LPS love it, they are not changing colors like they were under the MH.

The only Issue I am having is with my Garf Banzai. It is fading but my alk is low due to my Ca reactor being off line. My Atlantis Banzai is doing fine. and has beautiful colors. I did add and Ecoxotic 453nM strip over the Eurobrace to give some additional punch.

I was really looking into plasma, about 3 years ago, but the cost is just not worth it IMO. Even if I have to replace my LED units every 3-4 years, it is cheaper than the cost of the MH.

 

[Paul B]

My tank has gone from regular tungston lighting to regular flourescents, to VHO to PC to MH and just a couple of months ago to LEDs.
The tank ran at least 5 years with each type of lighting and about 15 years with MH.
The LEDs are the best by far, no comparism. The corals look better, the color is great (and dimmable) at night I make it mostly blue and it is really beautiful. There is no need for a chiller and this is the first summer in 40 years that I did not have to put ice in the tank to chill it.

So the pricing for LEDs is too prohibitive, otherwise you'd move to them. That is another perspective.

This is also not true. LEDs are free. If I were to change 3 MH lights it would cost about $300.00. The cost of the 36LED fixture I built was about $350.00 and I will not have to replace the $300.00 MH lamps in a year. My 6' tank ran two 175 watt MH lights at a power consumption of 350 watts. My LEDs put out about 25% more light while using only 108 watts, and I usually dim that.
I have both LPS and SPS corals and all are doing well.
I am not a Lemming and never follow the crowd, I still run a Reverse UG filter. :bigsmile:

 

[ronnie]

Thanks for you POV Paul. It is great to see an "old salty" adopting new technology. I like your "free" analogy as well.

 

[Troylee]

Fwiw par has nothing to do wit it!!!!! My LEDs had way more par than any system I have ever used.... :sad: I really wish people would get off the par bandwagon all together.... Corals don't care about par only humans do we have become so obsessed over it and it really don't mean squat!!!!! It's about spectrum and chemistry nothing at all states or ever will this needs this amount of par etc etc.... :cry: I'll stop there lol....

 

[ronnie]

Lee - I think you are right, sort of...

Most of the naysayers for LEDs always point to the fact that they can't light a deep tank. This is directly correlated with PAR.

We, as hobbiests, probably do put too much stock into PAR, though. With that said, I did just buy an apogee PAR meter. I mostly want it since I'm deviating from the Cree train and going with the cheaper LEDs. I don't dispute that Cree is better - it by far is. What I dispute is the fact that the cheaper LEDs aren't cost effective.

I think one of the biggest MH killers for me was color change. I invested $150 in two bulbs and didn't like the color. I wasn't about to change them out, though, because I too cheap for that. So I ran them and started to hate my sticks. They grew phenomenally, though. But the color was blah. Anyone who runs MH, I've always thought they should run the bulb I ran for the first year and then switch to the bulb they want. That way they can grow smaller frags out quickly and then in the second year have some nice big mini colonies to look at and then work at coloring them up.

 

[Acropolis]

Troy is right but didn't elaborate enough....maybe sick of it ? You can have great PAR values but lack spectrum since all a PAR value is telling you is that you have radiation within the spectrum of photosynthesis....

 

[Dave3112]

Troy is right but didn't elaborate enough....maybe sick of it ? You can have great PAR values but lack spectrum since all a PAR value is telling you is that you have radiation within the spectrum of photosynthesis....

+1 PAR Photosynthetic Available Radiation.

 

[Troylee]

Well without ever owning a par meter I can tell you LEDs will light anything a t5 or 250w mh will....I could tell by my corals "best test kit available" I bleached chalices on the sand all day long that were cooking under 250w radiums on pfo ballast that's the best mh combo you can get..... Here is the thing with LEDs.... I had a friend of mine that was gonna buy my fixture for his new tank but backed out because!!!!! It was deceiving he didn't like how the fixture looked dim but packed a punch.... That is the case and I think that's what most people see and think LEDs aren't enough.... I'll be the first to say I had a led tank on one side and a mh on the other... My mh looks 100 times brighter but!!!! Stuff bleaches under those dim looking LEDs in a hurry I couldn't keep anything on my frag rack over a week or it lose color by bleaching out.... I think that's where most peoples 2 cents derive from not exp.... Just remember they look dim but they pack a heck of a punch don't under estimate them....