What made you switch to LED ?

cdness · Jun 9, 2012

The reasons I WILL be switching:

1. Power Savings (not just the LEDs themselves, you need to figure in house AC, chillers/fans, etc as well as the amount of evaporation due to evaporative cooling.
2. Lamp replacements (6 T-5 lamps in my current config with LED on one side. If I went all T-5 it would be 12 lamps as they would be 3 footers... replacement costs are HUGE.)
3. Programmability
4. Heating Issues

Poseidon · Jun 10, 2012

I am going with LED on the new tank, I've had halide, and T5 in the past, and both are valid options. In this case, I have to buy a light, so I might as well buy the option that will cost the least to run long term.

Devonjevon · Jun 10, 2012

Heating issues. Tank was almost at the point where I needed a chiller

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Dog Boy Dave · Jun 10, 2012

MY MAIN DISPLAY IS 60 " BY 48" BY 27 " deep. I have 6x400 watt over my main display. 1x250 over part of my sump and 1x175 over my turtle tank. Been running them for years. Small house in North Florida and our electric bill is crazy. I have always run my halides for 12 plus hours with no suppliments. This time of year the outside temp is 90 plus. Our ac runs 24/7 and by 10 oclock at night the house is warm around the tank and the temp in the tank has climbed from 78 in the morning to around 83. If there is an ac problem or chiller problem the consequences are serious. I love the halides , growth, color, sparkle, all of it. I dont change the lamps as much as most people but it doesnt seem to be a problem in the long term....However..... I have seen several tanks around Tallahassee that have done very good with Leds. I am looking at the components to build a fixture and I have been talking to one of my local fish stores about working out a trade for some LED fixtures as well. I plan to build one fixture to cover the back side of the tank within the next couple of weeks and hope to change over completely within the next 6 months. The reasons for me are : They work well. I have seen tanks use them long term and those tanks do as well under the LED as they did under the halides. The corals show as good or better color. The cost saving from heat reduction and humidity reduction alone in my situation will be enough to make it worth while. Since i am building them myself, LED replacement will be easy. I will be doing it in stages so the cost will be spread out. In the long run, its a no brainer for a system as large as mine. For the smaller systems the simplicity of halides might make them worth while but for larger systems , unless you have unlimited resourses then LEDs seem to be the way to go. I love my halides but sometimes you just gotta move on.

Jake9015 · Jun 10, 2012

I made the move from the stock t5s in
The rsm130d to custom LEDs because the color is better, corals are all in better shape now, and every time I changed my bulbs it cost me 50 bucks so I thought it would be more
Cost efficient and it was!

Pappy · Jul 1, 2012

I was tired of bulb replacement and the. I saw someone's tank with LEDs and that was enough for me to switch. An after thought was I didn't have to run a chiller anymore and wow my stuff looks soooo much better!

Mike D "like the beastie boys" Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

fish&corals · Jul 1, 2012

i just switched to them about a week ago .. sold off my MH and T5 retro kit that paid for my LED evolutions .. i love them .. my corals are doing much better .. so glad the bulb change outs are over ..

Henry C · Jul 1, 2012

I switched over a year ago. I'm running 2 x 119 watt fixtures. I was running 2 x 250 watt mh and 2 T-5's and had alot of heat issues even with 4 in. fans running in the canopy. I also had some pretty crappy par readings on the mh/t-5 set up where the leds numbers are much higher. I'm still getting great growth and the par values are still pretty close to where they were when I first got them. They aren't dimmable but I do the dusk to dawn configuration with my RK2 controller. My corals are growing steady and have great colors. Plus my electric bill dropped 40 bucks a month so they have already paid for themselves since April.

marinelife · Jul 1, 2012

I made the switch over 2.5 years ago. I was tired of not being able to sit in the same room as my tank. The room would get in the 90s because of 3 400MHs and a chiller running. After the switch the room stays cool, the corals are growing and the color is great. Plus I have not had to buy any bulbs since.
My electric bill dropped and my AC shuts off now!
I only have white, blue and royal blue LEDs, I see no reason to have other colors!!