Phoenix 14K 250W DE vs 20K 250DE

[TheGreatWave]

I went to T5/Led because starting with MH wasn't blue enough.

How come it's insulting when I point out that you guys want to see a tank shot before discussing lighting, that was your rule that I pointed out. It's ironic you find it insulting.

 

[Bpb]

I went to T5/Led because starting with MH wasn't blue enough.

How come it's insulting when I point out that you guys want to see a tank shot before discussing lighting, that was your rule that I pointed out. It's ironic you find it insulting.

Please go dig up where it was my rule? I’m curious when I posted that

 

[cwk84]

Just tried adjusting your picture with snapseed but since I can’t visually see your tank it’s hard

You did a good job color correcting the picture. This is very close to what it looks like in person. You took the green and blue hue out a little. That green-blue, as well as the yellow hue, is exactly what bothers me. I have no problem with white. I have a problem with yellow and other undertones. I want an icey cool appearance and not a LED-like blue tank.

Yes the difference is in the camera and likely the bulb age may be at play also. For what it’s worth your tank looks like a 14k tank shot with a cell phone. It doesn’t look like anything is wrong with your bulbs. That overall hue looks correct. As you and everyone have said it sounds like you just need to rework your setup if you’re wanting to go with halides, and get electronic ballasts and 20k bulbs, or just go all t5 or leds if you need to go bluer

I do not want to go "bluer" I want to go "icier" with a tad of violet (actinic touch) in it. I do not want that LED blue. I HATE it. I like that the MH's I have are white but I do not like that they are yellow with a green/blue hue with or without T5's. The T5s are barely strong enough to cut through. You will see the difference in the picture, though. Without T5s the phone picture will not turn out as blue/green and instead be more yellow like the edited one above.

A coral growing facility can buy a 1000watt MH for $300. A coral growing facility can buy 1000watt of Radion LED for $10,000.

For some reason a coral facility will pay 30 times more for a LED light. Hmm.

Have you ever considered that the reason for buying more expensive LED setups is the fact that they will save money in the long run? LEDs do not require replacement nor do they draw as much power. For growing facilities, it is a better business decision to use LEDs.

 

[Bpb]

You did a good job color correcting the picture. This is very close to what it looks like in person. You took the green and blue hue out a little. That green-blue, as well as the yellow hue, is exactly what bothers me. I have no problem with white. I have a problem with yellow and other undertones. I want an icey cool appearance and not a LED-like blue tank.



I do not want to go "bluer" I want to go "icier" with a tad of violet (actinic touch) in it. I do not want that LED blue. I HATE it. I like that the MH's I have are white but I do not like that they are yellow with a green/blue hue with or without T5's. The T5s are barely strong enough to cut through. You will see the difference in the picture, though. Without T5s the phone picture will not turn out as blue/green and instead be more yellow like the edited one above.



Have you ever considered that the reason for buying more expensive LED setups is the fact that they will save money in the long run? LEDs do not require replacement nor do they draw as much power. For growing facilities, it is a better business decision to use LEDs.

Having run the lighting carousel pretty extensively for the last 8 years or so, I can say a couple facts and a couple assumptions/suggestions.

Fact: it’s going to get expensive quick trying out every available mh bulb, especially once you start adding in different ballasts. Were it me I would ask as many people as I could to ship me their old bulbs and I’d buy an adjustable ballast. I would start experimenting on what was closer to my goal. That’s the most economical way to do it.

Fact: that still may not get you where you need to be. You may have an aesthetic in your head that just isn’t available now. Maybe you would have loved an aquaconnect 14k, or a reeflux 12k, or an XM20k. Unfortunately we will never know as they can’t be purchased anymore. Though I guarantee. Buy a used adjustable electronic ballast and post a WTB ad asking for old used bulbs and you can at least try some out. You’ll likely just have to pay shipping. I have an old radium I’d be willing to send you.

Assumptions: I’m thinking presently you’ll need to use the t5 bulbs to tune your color more carefully. Blue+ bulbs will only ADD to the greenish look as they have a strong green peak and look a tad “turquoise” to my eye. If you want more violet I’d pick up a pair of purple+ and a pair of true actinics and see if any combo of those will improve the appearance for you. A BEAUTIFUL 4 bulb combo on t5 is 2 blue+, a true actinic, and a purple+. It looks very nice by itself and would likely adjust the hue of your halides just right. Maybe...... either way you’re going to want to buy some more bulbs to experiment. Strongly suggest trying to find free used bulbs first rather than spending $400 on bulbs you may only like a couple of

Edit/addendum: Look for the bulb combo that provides the most pleasing aesthetic. What color you want the room to glow and what color you want the white sand to reflect. Don’t judge a bulb swap based on what your corals do immediately. They WILL shift. When I changed from t5ho to mh, my corals looked spectacular for a few days, then they began shifting and most of them look very different now several months later. Some better some worse. Growth overall is dramatically better which was my primary goal. I’m accepting less color right now, as I find the aesthetic acceptable. I liked my t5 look better though. Growth just wasn’t where I wanted it and bulb changes got annoying.

 

[oreo54]

Run large arrays of RGB LEDs for white..
RGB=W w/ little yellow..

Titan 1 – Ultum Nature Systems

ultumnaturesystems.com

Only about 10000K though..

sorry just for fun and really outside the box..

 

[TheGreatWave]

Have you ever considered that the reason for buying more expensive LED setups is the fact that they will save money in the long run? LEDs do not require replacement nor do they draw as much power. For growing facilities, it is a better business decision to use LEDs.

For sure, many times. It's a bit of a fallacy for a few reasons.

- We are on version 4 of the radion, while it will eventually plateau, I don't think we are there yet. Most will upgrade to a newer light before any savings are realized.

- light=yield. LED are more efficient, however they aren't that much more efficient. Ballpark is you will still need around 80% - 85% of the electricity used for LED as you would T5 or MH. Whether or not that savings is enough to pay for Radions over time depends on the price of electricity where you live. Perhaps in large facility in California it makes sense.

- The reality is they probably had at least some promotional consideration or discount to use these lights. Lets face it they look awesome and this is a visual hobby.

- Halide fixtures are really cheap to purchase and bulbs are cheap too if you buy a carton of 6500K warehouse bulbs.

Now if a person wanted to light their system with white LED, well that is a whole new ball of wax, there is an order of magnitude of more white LED available for a fraction of the price of these pre-assembled reef-specific LED. Consider you can buy a box of white LED at the grocery store totaling 54watt for about $15. $15 vs $500 for 50 watt of reef LED.

Truth be told, lights like Kessil and Radion are at peak market now and will start to decline at some point in the near future. The move will be away from the custom pucks towards more generic larger panels that are inherintly less proprietary. No fans, no controllers (although there will be some control no doubt) You can just buy a quailty meanwell PSU and buy a big 20K LED panel from China and plug it in. Very T5 like in operation and implementation.

 

[cwk84]

Having run the lighting carousel pretty extensively for the last 8 years or so, I can say a couple facts and a couple assumptions/suggestions.

Fact: it’s going to get expensive quick trying out every available mh bulb, especially once you start adding in different ballasts. Were it me I would ask as many people as I could to ship me their old bulbs and I’d buy an adjustable ballast. I would start experimenting on what was closer to my goal. That’s the most economical way to do it.

Fact: that still may not get you where you need to be. You may have an aesthetic in your head that just isn’t available now. Maybe you would have loved an aquaconnect 14k, or a reeflux 12k, or an XM20k. Unfortunately we will never know as they can’t be purchased anymore. Though I guarantee. Buy a used adjustable electronic ballast and post a WTB ad asking for old used bulbs and you can at least try some out. You’ll likely just have to pay shipping. I have an old radium I’d be willing to send you.

Assumptions: I’m thinking presently you’ll need to use the t5 bulbs to tune your color more carefully. Blue+ bulbs will only ADD to the greenish look as they have a strong green peak and look a tad “turquoise” to my eye. If you want more violet I’d pick up a pair of purple+ and a pair of true actinics and see if any combo of those will improve the appearance for you. A BEAUTIFUL 4 bulb combo on t5 is 2 blue+, a true actinic, and a purple+. It looks very nice by itself and would likely adjust the hue of your halides just right. Maybe...... either way you’re going to want to buy some more bulbs to experiment. Strongly suggest trying to find free used bulbs first rather than spending $400 on bulbs you may only like a couple of

Edit/addendum: Look for the bulb combo that provides the most pleasing aesthetic. What color you want the room to glow and what color you want the white sand to reflect. Don’t judge a bulb swap based on what your corals do immediately. They WILL shift. When I changed from t5ho to mh, my corals looked spectacular for a few days, then they began shifting and most of them look very different now several months later. Some better some worse. Growth overall is dramatically better which was my primary goal. I’m accepting less color right now, as I find the aesthetic acceptable. I liked my t5 look better though. Growth just wasn’t where I wanted it and bulb changes got annoying.

The T5 combo I enjoyed most was 2 blue +, 1 actinic, 1 coral plus (a nice cool blueish look with some purple) and for the daylight channel, I had 2 purple plus which made the tank super white but with without the yellow look. My corals colored up nicely.

I do not want to go back to T5's. I want to find a way to get the best of both worlds. I'm thinking a T5/MH combination (no LED) so I can get the nice white look but also the color rendition of T5s. I might have to get a different fixture for that because 2 T5s are not going to cut it. I was thinking Hamilton Maristar with Radiums ( I can get some for 25 bucks each, barely used) or a DE fixture with 4 T5's so I can keep using the bulbs I have now.

I've seen pictures of the Reeflux 12k. It looks fantastic! Nice blue with some purple but not too much. Just a tad. The XM20k seems a bit bluer in pictures but the color rendition is nice. Unfortunately, I cannot get these bulbs anymore.


As far as the colors of your corals, do you run a ULNS system? I would imagine with so much PAR, a high nutrient environment would be better. My corals looked best when I had 20ppm nitrate in my old tank. The bleached setosa frags you can see in the picture were deep orange. The moment I installed an algae reactor it went downhill and all my corals got paler and paler. Currently, I only have 2ppm nitrate despite feeding heavily. PO4 is hovering around 0.04ppm. I don't think that my corals will color up that much, even under MHs, unless I dose NO3 to bump it up to 5-10ppm.

 

[cwk84]

For sure, many times. It's a bit of a fallacy for a few reasons.

- We are on version 4 of the radion, while it will eventually plateau, I don't think we are there yet. Most will upgrade to a newer light before any savings are realized.

- light=yield. LED are more efficient, however they aren't that much more efficient. Ballpark is you will still need around 80% - 85% of the electricity used for LED as you would T5 or MH. Whether or not that savings is enough to pay for Radions over time depends on the price of electricity where you live. Perhaps in large facility in California it makes sense.

- The reality is they probably had at least some promotional consideration or discount to use these lights. Lets face it they look awesome and this is a visual hobby.

- Halide fixtures are really cheap to purchase and bulbs are cheap too if you buy a carton of 6500K warehouse bulbs.

Now if a person wanted to light their system with white LED, well that is a whole new ball of wax, there is an order of magnitude of more white LED available for a fraction of the price of these pre-assembled reef-specific LED. Consider you can buy a box of white LED at the grocery store totaling 54watt for about $15. $15 vs $500 for 50 watt of reef LED.

Truth be told, lights like Kessil and Radion are at peak market now and will start to decline at some point in the near future. The move will be away from the custom pucks towards more generic larger panels that are inherintly less proprietary. No fans, no controllers (although there will be some control no doubt) You can just buy a quailty meanwell PSU and buy a big 20K LED panel from China and plug it in. Very T5 like in operation and implementation.

If you run them at full power, yes. But if you don't and if you don't intend on switching for at least a couple years, you will save money. LEDs produce good colors if you run the right spectrum and they will grow your corals just fine. But since I didn't have 1400 dollars for two LED fixtures I went for a used MH/T5 fixture that was offered to me. I paid 150 for the fixture, bulbs, and two Bluewave 7 M80 ballasts. Maybe in the future, I will also try LEDs but for now, I want to mess around with MHs and see what can be done.

 

[TheGreatWave]

The power slider is arbitrary.

I call a 90watt XR-15 Radion a 50 watt puck while running AB+, it's already taken into consideration. If you turn the slider down, you need more fixtures to maintain the light output.

A 1000watt MH/T5 system gets replaced with a 800w system if you are actually trying to reduce power consumption and not loose growth. (which is independent from the cost of the system) Shape is a whole another discussion, LED are harder to use. It's like comparing icycles to fog. (Both are water )

This 800w system is based on your chosen color, which needs to be determined first, not after.

 

[xiaoxiy]

I've seen pictures of the Reeflux 12k. It looks fantastic! Nice blue with some purple but not too much. Just a tad.

FYI: I tried the Reeflux 12k DE250W on both the Icecap 250W and 250W HQI adjustable ballast. It had a slight yellow hue on HQI, but had a slightly bluer hue with the 250 non-HQI setting.

 

[cwk84]

I did some photoshop trickery to show you guys what I'd like to see in person. Mind you, I have a color corrected monitor so it might not look the same on your guys' screens. On my iPhone, it looks pretty close to what I'd like to see in person.

It's still white but there is some blue and some violet in the mix.

 

[TheGreatWave]

I had a unbranded 150W HQI bulbs (mag ballast) that looked just like your rendering. (Minus the navy blue on the bottom silicone and shadows.) Sorry that doesn't help much, all I know is that it was a "14K".

It did a reasonably good job with colors while keeping the sand essentially white. It almost made things pop and fluoresce, but not quite like what most people want or expect.

Myself, I was indifferent. It was not what I wanted yet still nice in it's own way. I used it for the best part of two years.

 

[A. grandis]

...There are only 1 or 2 bulbs that a majority of people like, the rest most people think look terrible.

Remember one of the biggest proponents of MH here keeps a big tank of zoas, so don't listen to the nonsense about needing MH to grow SPS etc. (Not my rules)

If you read between the lines, even @Bpb is basically telling you ya, it's supposed to look like that.

A coral growing facility can buy a 1000watt MH for $300. A coral growing facility can buy 1000watt of Radion LED for $10,000.

For some reason a coral facility will pay 30 times more for a LED light. Hmm.

You have absolutely no idea who you are talking about, how many year I'm in this hobby, and how many SPS corals I worked with in my life. So please stop your childish behavior and sending me disrespectful PMs!
By the way, we used to grow SPS with T8s back when I was a kid and had sexual reproduction with many SPS species. No one here is saying we need MH to "GROW corals"!

 

[A. grandis]

The T5 combo I enjoyed most was 2 blue +, 1 actinic, 1 coral plus (a nice cool blueish look with some purple) and for the daylight channel, I had 2 purple plus which made the tank super white but with without the yellow look. My corals colored up nicely.

I do not want to go back to T5's. I want to find a way to get the best of both worlds. I'm thinking a T5/MH combination (no LED) so I can get the nice white look but also the color rendition of T5s. I might have to get a different fixture for that because 2 T5s are not going to cut it. I was thinking Hamilton Maristar with Radiums ( I can get some for 25 bucks each, barely used) or a DE fixture with 4 T5's so I can keep using the bulbs I have now.

I've seen pictures of the Reeflux 12k. It looks fantastic! Nice blue with some purple but not too much. Just a tad. The XM20k seems a bit bluer in pictures but the color rendition is nice. Unfortunately, I cannot get these bulbs anymore.


As far as the colors of your corals, do you run a ULNS system? I would imagine with so much PAR, a high nutrient environment would be better. My corals looked best when I had 20ppm nitrate in my old tank. The bleached setosa frags you can see in the picture were deep orange. The moment I installed an algae reactor it went downhill and all my corals got paler and paler. Currently, I only have 2ppm nitrate despite feeding heavily. PO4 is hovering around 0.04ppm. I don't think that my corals will color up that much, even under MHs, unless I dose NO3 to bump it up to 5-10ppm.

Best way is to get the bulbs and try, or go to a store that has MHs to have an idea.
Remember: any change to MH with any bulb you will see color changes with new pigment formation in the log run. This is reefing and you will need to give time to the corals. Go slow! Find out for yourself.

 

[A. grandis]

If you run them at full power, yes. But if you don't and if you don't intend on switching for at least a couple years, you will save money. LEDs produce good colors if you run the right spectrum and they will grow your corals just fine. But since I didn't have 1400 dollars for two LED fixtures I went for a used MH/T5 fixture that was offered to me. I paid 150 for the fixture, bulbs, and two Bluewave 7 M80 ballasts. Maybe in the future, I will also try LEDs but for now, I want to mess around with MHs and see what can be done.

You won't regret a bit. MHs are the best in many ways and easier to work with!

 

[cwk84]

I had a unbranded 150W HQI bulbs (mag ballast) that looked just like your rendering. (Minus the navy blue on the bottom silicone and shadows.) Sorry that doesn't help much, all I know is that it was a "14K".

It did a reasonably good job with colors while keeping the sand essentially white. It almost made things pop and fluoresce, but not quite like what most people want or expect.

Myself, I was indifferent. It was not what I wanted yet still nice in it's own way. I used it for the best part of two years.

You have absolutely no idea who you are talking about, how many year I'm in this hobby, and how many SPS corals I worked with in my life. So please stop your childish behavior and sending me disrespectful PMs!
By the way, we used to grow SPS with T8s back when I was a kid and had sexual reproduction with many SPS species. No one here is saying we need MH to "GROW corals"!

If I didn't know better I'd say he has it out for you lol.

 

[DogsRule]

OP, just thought I'd throw this out there, just incase. Have you tried rotating the bulb within the housing/reflector? I've never run DE MH bulbs, but can tell you some SE bulbs can really shift in spectrum depending on how the bulb is orientated in the socket. My current 14K Hams can go from a very yellow to the desired 14K look depending on bulb rotation. For this particular batch of bulbs, the nipple ( on the inner bulb for SE ) needs to be facing down. Other bulbs & brands I ran in the past didn't seem to matter. Just thought it might be worth checking before you go spending any $. HTH

 

[cwk84]

I don't think that matter in DE fixtures. I can tell when they fire up that they would actually be super blue one ballasts. When they fire up they are SUPER blue at some point but then you can see it yellowing up quite a bit. It's my ballasts that overdrive them.

 

[DogsRule]

I don't think that matter in DE fixtures. I can tell when they fire up that they would actually be super blue one ballasts. When they fire up they are SUPER blue at some point but then you can see it yellowing up quite a bit. It's my ballasts that overdrive them.

Wasn't sure if this was just something that was unique to certain SE bulbs or also applied to some DE bulbs ( again I have zero DE experience). Hope you can find the look you are striving for. All the best.

 

[cwk84]

I meant to say on eballasts they would be super blue. Autocorrect doesn't like that word I guess...