Metal Halides - Back to the Future?

Charlie’s Frags · Nov 22, 2019

Magellan said:
I bet the MH side colors up better. I have an “old” metal halide lit JBJ, every coral I’ve gotten from the LFS has gotten more color after some time in my tank.

Which jbj?

Graffiti Spot · Nov 22, 2019

Breadman03 said:
10k 400 watt Hamilton and 2xG4 Pros over my 150 Deep Dimension. The halide is hibernating while the fresh reboot stabilizes, but it will end up doing the heavy lifting. I need to get my canopy built to minimize light spill.

Is that a yeti watching your tank?

I had that same tank setup two years ago. Love it. But can’t get rid of it now. Not even for a few chunky frags!

jda · Nov 22, 2019

Daylight, full spectrum from 350-850nm to have corals get true color and then "blue it up" as you see fit to illuminate them. People who only use LED miss out a lot on the first part of this.

Breadman03 · Nov 22, 2019

Pedoconfuego said:
Is that a yeti watching your tank? I had that same tank setup two years ago. Love it. But can’t get rid of it now. Not even for a few chunky frags!

A 150 DD? Yeah, cubes dropped off of the radar pretty hard. I don’t have much usable wall space in my house and this is essentially as big as I’ll be able to do in it. Our next house will be chosen with plans for something longer.

SeaDweller · Nov 22, 2019

I bet the part of the tank that gets hit by the MH and the Radions will look the best in terms of growth and color

C. Eymann · Nov 22, 2019

My ideal setup would be using 10-12k halides for the heavy lifting, then Radions or Orpheks for supplemental blue.

However, I just cant justify the cost and heat of halides down here in FL.
Im setting up another reef here very soon,
I'm currently looking at maybe two reef breeder LEDs with 4x T5s, might seek out some used Radions though if I can find them.

SeaDweller · Nov 22, 2019

C. Eymann said:
My ideal setup would be using 10-12k halides for the heavy lifting, then Radions or Orpheks for supplemental blue.

However, I just cant justify the cost and heat of halides down here in FL.
Im setting up another reef here very soon,
I'm currently looking at maybe two reef breeder LEDs with 4x T5s, might seek out some used Radions though if I can find them.

get 'er up! Can't wait to see what you can do with some stuff!

C. Eymann · Nov 22, 2019

SeaDweller said:
get 'er up! Can't wait to see what you can do with some stuff!

Well, your pics/corals are what kinda have me sold on the reefbreeders, I still have quite a bit to learn with LEDs, so it may be a challenge at first, but I have been doing lots of homework.

SeaDweller · Nov 22, 2019

C. Eymann said:
Well, your pics/corals are what kinda have me sold on the reefbreeders, I still have quite a bit to learn with LEDs, so it may be a challenge at first, but I have been doing lots of homework.

I was looking at the sales they're running for the AI Hydra 52 HDs and I think that unit uses the exact same diodes as my Reefbreeders (Cree, SemiLED, Osram). I was toying with the idea of getting some, but then I realized I probably wouldn't be gaining anything different seeing how the spectrums produced would be similar. So... I scrapped that Idea.

DesertReefT4r · Nov 22, 2019

Pedoconfuego said:
Is that a yeti watching your tank? I had that same tank setup two years ago. Love it. But can’t get rid of it now. Not even for a few chunky frags!

If you were local I would take your 150DD.

Reefanatik · Nov 23, 2019

I love my 250w MH Radiums and Radion combo. About to add two more XR15’s.

Katrina71 · Nov 23, 2019

I'm thinking of going retro too.

Graffiti Spot · Nov 23, 2019

Reefanatik said:
I love my 250w MH Radiums and Radion combo. About to add two more XR15’s.

Love it! I was going to go with fixtures but I couldn’t justify the cost while they would be hard to find ones that fit. So I went with the orpek bars. Four of them is equal to a decent sized fixture it seems. So far I like them.

JP Reef · Nov 23, 2019

I use MH and radions in my 6' 125g. I only use 175w Hamilton 20k bulbs, but the corals have never looked better. The radions give me the ramp up/down, but the Halides are what are truly giving my corals the color and growth.

pigmo · Dec 13, 2019

ok, we're 3 weeks into this and can already tell which acros respond, and which do not. it's about 50 50 so far. will update later. ;Cat

SeaDweller · Dec 13, 2019

pigmo said:
ok, we're 3 weeks into this and can already tell which acros respond, and which do not. it's about 50 50 so far. will update later. ;Cat

any in particular and any that you thought would, but wouldn’t? I was contemplating adding some MH too.

kevin.st · Sep 30, 2020

pigmo said:
ok, we're 3 weeks into this and can already tell which acros respond, and which do not. it's about 50 50 so far. will update later. ;Cat

Any update?

pigmo · Sep 30, 2020

Without being tooooo specific, in general most all the US old school acros we have liked the MH.

However, some Aussie imports did not like it, surprise! We got great growth on hyacinthus and stags tho. (But I don't like stags at all.) Shortcakes not really. Coloration, well, were nowhere as nice as under Radions. We even hung another Radion G4, all blues at 100% to supplement, next to the MH, and even that didn't work to pull interesting coloration. We lowered the lights so PAR eventually got way past 1000, but still no interesting colors! By interesting I mean killer. Just normal is not good enough lol.

And with this 250W radium 20k, our electricity went up almost $100 month!

So we actually took the MH down after about 9 months, because definitely we have way more new school acros, and NO WAY do we appreciate acros looking so dull under 'whites.' Plus Socal is so hot, we couldn't take the heat. In the end for us, it was not worth it.

So I have a satisfactory answer now, and my brother @jzw agrees -- are LEDs the chicken or the egg -- they're definitely the egg that makes many chickens!

;Clown ;Clown ;Clown

kevin.st · Sep 30, 2020

^^Wow. Thank you for the thorough response. I have been contemplating putting my halides back up, instead of my hydras. But maybe I will add more fixtures or t5's.

Thanks, again.

Superlightman · Aug 15, 2021

Reefanatik said:
I love my 250w MH Radiums and Radion combo. About to add two more XR15’s.

how did you fix this ? I' thinking about ad halides to the radions that deceived me, everything was better under halides. but for ramp up and down they are good, I'm looking for a way to fix them to the giessman infinity fixture