T5/LED vs T5/Metal Hallide

[leepink23]

Awesome, that’s manageable! I just bought my daughter a for her 16th birthday so no upgrades or changes for a little while plus I want to see how my current setup will produce. I have noticed encrusting taking off dramatically since adding T5 to the radions.

Car for birthday

 

[hybridazn]

My plan is to run this combo at least 6 months to gauge my success, so far 6 weeks in I am pretty happy. Which halide fixture do you use?

I use Hamilton Bali sun reflectors with reefbrite supra t5s and reefbrite xho led

 

[leepink23]

Pretty much what he said. The color is even across the tank. Large reflectors and one bulb give a nice even spectrum where leds have multiple colors with single reflectors per node. Giving an uneven spectrum at certain spots of your reef. There is also many factors that play into this. How high its mounted how deep you tank is and so forth. The debate of which is better will never end honestly. I think they all do 100% You can google reefs with mh, leds, t5s, hybrids they all look 120%

I can see the reflectors being a huge plus, as far as spectrum, this is BRS review of the radions with diffuser, even across the tank, what would halide spectrum look like? When you add 2 blue + and 2 coral + to this I would have thought spectrum would be great with this setup. But I am not very knowledgeable to be honest in these areas.

 

[Reefcowboy]

Temperature is what IMO the biggest issue with Halides. I ran chillers in my past MH set ups, and the heat of the chiller along with the fixture was overwhelming. That made me venture to try leds.

Now I run the tank in a basement room with constant AC and the temp is a steady 78 all day. When the lights are on, that climbs to a 79.5 tops. Having a constant AC in the tank room is the key to beat the heat.

Heat taken care of, MH is an easy slam dunk against leds. Bulb replacement isnt an issue either as for $160 a year I replace both Radium bulbs in my fixture. If I grew my corals and fragged for profit, I could get that back 4x with just my high end sps alone that would look much better than under leds.

Also, I actually like to replace MH bulbs vs Leds. When I get a fresh MH radium out of a box, I know my fixture will run like it did when it was brand new, so drops in intensity never cross my mind. Leds diodes are degrading over time, how much nobody knows. Run your leds at 100% intensities everyday and time is ticking away.

In other words, that “initial high investment” of led fixtures wont last even close to as pitched. As a matter of fact I have realized switching LEDs(I could never get satisfied) made me spend LOTS of money, I actually dont want to think about it. Lets just say I could have bought MH bulbs for my lifetime.

Leds did not save me any electricity as I ran more led fixtures to get best possible coverage. It is an even battle. I guess color is subjective to the eyes of each one independently. Some would say I had great color in my led system while I thought it didnt as I knew what these corals looked like with MH.

Some have success with leds, no doubt. It isnt an easy task dialing in all factors together, even for experienced sps keepers.

If I had LPS, leds would be it. Sps, MH all day.
To leds credit, I cant skip the blue leds for pop. Dusk and dawn under blue leds are a must IMO and arent replaced by blue spectrum T5’s.

Blue leds serve the purpose of highlighting the good work done by the halides in my tank LOL.

 

[leepink23]

That setup sounds oddly familiar

Do you use the cebu sun as well? Is heat an issue with it?

 

[leepink23]

That setup sounds oddly familiar

Do you use the cebu sun as well? Is heat an issue with it?

 

[Crabs McJones]

Do you use the cebu sun as well? Is heat an issue with it?

I do heat isnt a huge issue as the fixture has a glass panel and utilizes two fans to carry heat out of the fixture and keep everything cool. I only noticed a .5 degree increase with this fixture

 

[BoomCorals]

I can see the reflectors being a huge plus, as far as spectrum, this is BRS review of the radions with diffuser, even across the tank, what would halide spectrum look like? When you add 2 blue + and 2 coral + to this I would have thought spectrum would be great with this setup. But I am not very knowledgeable to be honest in these areas.

LED have to combine different diodes to make a full spectrum. The reality is that it doesn’t seem to equate the same as say a halide or T5 bulb.

 

[leepink23]

I do heat isnt a huge issue as the fixture has a glass panel and utilizes two fans to carry heat out of the fixture and keep everything cool. I only noticed a .5 degree increase with this fixture

I considered this fixture, do you have any pictures of the included legs? Did you replace the bulbs that it comes with? I would think I could sale my radions and t5 hybrid to cover this if I decide to change.

 

[leepink23]

LED have to combine different diodes to make a full spectrum. The reality is that it doesn’t seem to equate the same as say a halide or T5 bulb.

I can see that from adding the T5,

 

[Crabs McJones]

I considered this fixture, do you have any pictures of the included legs? Did you replace the bulbs that it comes with? I would think I could sale my radions and t5 hybrid to cover this if I decide to change.

I'd highly recommend hanging it instead of the mounting legs. The legs dont let you get the fixture as high off the waters surface as I'd like. The legs are essentially L brackets with bolts and nuts I kept the bulbs that came with it as I was able to customize exactly what bulbs I wanted with it.

 

[BoomCorals]

I considered this fixture, do you have any pictures of the included legs? Did you replace the bulbs that it comes with? I would think I could sale my radions and t5 hybrid to cover this if I decide to change.

I sent you a PM about the Cebu. Crabs got his from me too so he can tell you how his experience was.

 

[Crabs McJones]

I sent you a PM about the Cebu. Crabs got his from me too so he can tell you how his experience was.

 

[leepink23]

I'd highly recommend hanging it instead of the mounting legs. The legs dont let you get the fixture as high off the waters surface as I'd like. The legs are essentially L brackets with bolts and nuts I kept the bulbs that came with it as I was able to customize exactly what bulbs I wanted with it.

Where did you get the hanging hardware from? Any pictures of yours installed?

 

[Crabs McJones]

Where did you get the hanging hardware from? Any pictures of yours installed?

I'll take some pictures this evening. I dont have any on my phone right now

 

[A. grandis]

I am not concerned about it raising the power bill but would be concerned about it raising the temperature. Adding T5 put me up to 79 from 78, would I expect another 1-2 degree increase with halides? When BRS did a video on radions with diffuser they said spectrum was close to perfect so with adding t5 to that I questioned how much and why it would improve. I am getting tremendous growth with my current setup but am not opposed to switching if it’s that much better. Thanks for the input.

The temperature issue with halides will depend on where you live and how you set your lights over that tank.
Halides will bring it up a bit, of course. I use fans blowing between the fixtures to cool the lights before they heat up the water, by turning those fans ON at the same time the halides and/or T5s turn ON. The fans turn OFF with the lights. I use Vornado and those small clip fans, depending on the fixture.
Here I have to use chiller every day for every marine tank, cause the temperature is naturally higher than 78° - 79°F.

You said you're getting "tremendous growth with your current set up". That is a very relative affirmation when you are not comparing it to anything. Question is why would you want to change? I would worry about changing it only AFTER checking out some local halide/T5 systems. That way you'll be able to see for yourself.

 

[jda]

Even when I lived in the Midwest with 100 degree and 100% humidity days, fans could keep my tanks cool. I needed to turn the fans with the halides and not get cute and wait until the tank rose a degree or two and then had to start to chase.

Chiller is not the end of the world if you have a fish room or in-wall tank. When I did use one, it was kinda nice because it came on in the late afternoon or evening and then warmed the room up so that the heaters did not have to run as much at night. Chiller is only really an issue if you keep the running heat in the room where you are.

 

[leepink23]

The temperature issue with halides will depend on where you live and how you set your lights over that tank.
Halides will bring it up a bit, of course. I use fans blowing between the fixtures to cool the lights before they heat up the water, by turning those fans ON at the same time the halides and/or T5s turn ON. The fans turn OFF with the lights. I use Vornado and those small clip fans, depending on the fixture.
Here I have to use chiller every day for every marine tank, cause the temperature is naturally higher than 78° - 79°F.

You said you're getting "tremendous growth with your current set up". That is a very relative affirmation when you are not comparing it to anything. Question is why would you want to change? I would worry about changing it only AFTER checking out some local halide/T5 systems. That way you'll be able to see for yourself.

All good points, I definitely can’t compare it to anything other than LED only, so compared to that my results have been great. I started getting curious when the main person I buy coral from, BoomCorals, switched to Halide and has been reporting tremendous success. I plan to keep watching for at least 6 months because I may not need or want to change anything. Lastly I was more curious how it is better because I love learning.

 

[leepink23]

Even when I lived in the Midwest with 100 degree and 100% humidity days, fans could keep my tanks cool. I needed to turn the fans with the halides and not get cute and wait until the tank rose a degree or two and then had to start to chase.

Chiller is not the end of the world if you have a fish room or in-wall tank. When I did use one, it was kinda nice because it came on in the late afternoon or evening and then warmed the room up so that the heaters did not have to run as much at night. Chiller is only really an issue if you keep the running heat in the room where you are.

Fans would be my only option because I don’t have space for a chiller but it’s good to know they can work!

 

[rockskimmerflow]

Fans would be my only option because I don’t have space for a chiller but it’s good to know they can work!

Yep fans absolutely work. Back in the day I had 2 x DE HQI 250w halides and 2x 39w T5ho with another 50w of LED strips on a 65 gallon 36x18x24 aquarium. Thats a ton of watts per gallon and I kept it cool with a single 9inch honeywell turboforce fan on the halides timer and a 120mm variable speed computer fan on a temp controller.

Never went above 80.5 even on 100 degree days. Evap was 2 to 3 gal a day though on a 65g but that didnt bother me honestly. ATO and a big reservoir work wonders vs the electricity cost on a chiller.