Led vs halides (1 Viewer)

[arthur08]

Im Helping out a friend with a project we r debating on going with halides or radions, not worried on how much heat produced or energy wasted, that being said money is not a matter just want the best color n growth possible.
I want to hear from you guys in ur own personal experience wat u got from switching from MH to LEDs or the other way around.

 

[Ostentum]

No better combo then MH and VHO. There is a reason 99% of the worlds best tanks are lit using this combo. Take a look at the Reefcentral Tanks of the Month. Proof is in the pudding. LED will grow colorful sps, just not as well as MH/VHO combo. You do realize this thread is going to open up a big fat debate right? Dont do LED unless you are going with a full spectrum of 360nm on up.

 

[fishcraze_1]

Halides. All the way.

TNT show tank.

Those are sweet.

 

[reeftopia]

I personally like a combo of Halides and leds. Agree with OST your a trouble maker

 

[arthur08]

No better combo then MH and VHO. There is a reason 99% of the worlds best tanks are lit using this combo. Take a look at the Reefcentral Tanks of the Month. Proof is in the pudding. LED will grow colorful sps, just not as well as MH/VHO combo. You do realize this thread is going to open up a big fat debate right? Dont do LED unless you are going with a full spectrum of 360nm on up.

Jason ya I know I'm just doing this for a friend I don't want to start a fight but I just put ur lights over my tank n damn!!! It looks amazing so he's trying to get convinced on one of them n I think he's leaning our way

 

[arthur08]

Halides. All the way.

TNT show tank.

Those are sweet.

Yes TNT show tanks are wat got me into the halides n that's why my friends wants them too

 

[fightmeaboutit]

20k radiums all the way!

 

[arthur08]

I really want to see the difference if anyone out here has both I want to see personally too proof that the growth is much higher and color as well

 

[sergio nuncio]

Im Helping out a friend with a project we r debating on going with halides or radions, not worried on how much heat produced or energy wasted, that being said money is not a matter just want the best color n growth possible.
I want to hear from you guys in ur own personal experience wat u got from switching from MH to LEDs or the other way around.

"Dont do LED unless you are going with a full spectrum of 360nm on up."

Please explain in detail?? also, does "radion" have the full spectrum 360nm and up??

Thanks in advance !!

Sergio

 

[Mark L.]

Vivid Aquariums finally put up a video on Saturday with an update to their MH vs. Radion experiment. The experiment has been going on for 5 months now. For MH they are using two 400 watt plus two 1000 watt Radium MH and for LED's they have 12 Ecotech Radions. I'm liking the results they are finding considering I'm going 5 Radions over my new build.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IpJM-EIrPI0

https://www.vividaquariums.com/aquariumLightExperiment.asp

 

[Ostentum]

"Dont do LED unless you are going with a full spectrum of 360nm on up."

Please explain in detail?? also, does "radion" have the full spectrum 360nm and up??

Thanks in advance !!

Sergio

There is an amino acid that is produced by Acropora in the 315-400 range, I believe. Anything sub 360 is harmful to the body, hince why I said 360+. If you dont allow the coral to produce this amino, IMHO you arenot providing everything that a coral needs to achieve its true coloration. I break it down kinda like this SPS coloration comes from 4 main components, water stability, lighting, flow and diet. Removing water quality I break it down as 25% lighting, 35% Flow and 40% diet. Proper diet in the captive world would be a variety of foods, vitamins and amino acids. I have been keeping sps off and on for 10+yrs, and I can say with changing no other things except adding amino acids, when the aminos were added there was a noticeable change for the better in coloration and polyp extension. I do have to say also that one particular coral I have never seen color up properly under LEDs, and I have fragged and given out alteast 5 frags of the Tyree Purple Monster to individuals with LED systems. Noone has ever been able to get the rich vibrant purple color, it either has a brownish color with purple hues or it gets this light purple color, comparable to something you would see in a Zeo tank. I believe the lowest nm bulb available for LED systems is the 400nm UV bulb, someone with a little more knowledge on that base can chime in.

And for those few out there that like to take what I say out of context. I am not saying that LEDs dont produce colorful SPS with good growth. They do. Just not the same as MH/VHO combo.
I have seen some great looking tanks with LED/VHO combo that look alot closer to the MH/VHO.

I found this nice graph for VHO bulbs
http://www.uvlco.com/AquariumT12VHO.html

 

[mwilliams62]

Tagging along here. I too would like to hear others have to say about MH vs LEDs. After attending the lighting event I learned a lot. I am leaning towards LEDs only because you have some many options for them compared to MH's you dont. Plus the cost for the electric bill you have with MH 's vs LEDs. Plus you dont have the heat or evaporation with the LEDs like you do with the MH's.

 

[gabe_j]

I don't see how you need to have sub 400 nm light since the uv get filtered out add the light passes through the glass bulb.

 

[arthur08]

Jason I'm imagining the ur mh/vho system is growing ur corals pretty nice huh. Any pics on how much they grow perhaps in a 3month period?

 

[Ostentum]

I have old pics. I had a whole system crash that nuked all of my sps so you really dont want to see current pics.

 

[Ostentum]

I don't see how you need to have sub 400 nm light since the uv get filtered out add the light passes through the glass bulb.

Thats the harmful UV, not all of it gabe. I will have to research and see exactly which spectrum is filtered out by the glass. If it was filtering out all of the UV rays, then why would the manufacturers and spectral analysis show up on the graphs?

 

[Ostentum]

Tagging along here. I too would like to hear others have to say about MH vs LEDs. After attending the lighting event I learned a lot. I am leaning towards LEDs only because you have some many options for them compared to MH's you dont. Plus the cost for the electric bill you have with MH 's vs LEDs. Plus you dont have the heat or evaporation with the LEDs like you do with the MH's.

My evaporation is the same with the halides on and with them off 1.5g a day on my 110g. 3 400w halides at 6.5hrs a day cost about 28 a month to run.

 

[soymilk]

My personal experience with MH and LEDs differ. I noticed a bit more water evaporation, but then again its because I used fans to keep my tank temperture down.

If money is not an issue, your best bet is MH and VHO as jason has mentioned. It's a proven technology and continues to prove itself day in and day out. But everyone's situation is different. For me it was trying to find a balance between heat, electricity usage, and cost of ownership. In the regard, leds won out for me.

If money is not an issue, then why not get both? Ideally my next tank setup is going to feature either 250w or 400w metal halides powered with leds flanking them in rows front and back.

 

[gabe_j]

I'd imagine it would show up because they are measuring total spectral output. the 3834 charts that show photosynthetic light absorption falls in the 400-700nm light peaking at 450, 660, with smaller peaks in the 420, 470,500, zones I just don't see how sub 400 nm light does anything other than produce coral sunblock. granted for the sake of argument I could see light around 395 being useful but the effects would be hard to measure.

 

[dayton]

Yea I have led and MH. No noticable expense on the electric bill when I put MH over the big tank (180g). Now I will say my LED set up is nothing special (iv seen one of gabes set ups and it will go against what im about to say) My LEDs cant do ANYTHING for SPS, I couldnt even keep a birdnest frag. However my low light stuff like zoas and ricordias and other lps and softies are doing fine. My point is if your going to do LEDS dont go inexpensive, get radions or talk to gabe. I do have 2 250w MH and going to add some vho in a week or so and I bought a milli colony from TnT that was grey two weeks ago in their tank and is now kind of an off white/cream color with a hint of blue on the tips. I bought another milli colony from dennis last week that he forgot fell in the back of his tank so I bought it looking as brown as the bark on a tree, come to find out im thinking its a rainbow milli. I lean a little towards the MH but again my leds are nothing special.