Recently, I read on FB where Dr. Sanjay posted that “LEDs do not grow coral” - Almost a year since the switch. Where he shows pictures comparison.
I have tried all types of lighting, including LED’s. Bottom-line my preference are T5’s. Those of you using LED’s honestly, why is you reason you use LED’s? Are you really seeing growth in compare when you had T5’s or MH? Are you really saving on your electric bill? Do you really see your tank looking nicer with LED’s? Did you buy the LED’s because you wanted to be a part of the trend?
FYI: I’ve started seriously in the hobby since 2006
My first fixture was 2x 400W 14K MH Hamilton fixture
downgraded to 2 X 250W
At the end I’ve owned 3 X EcoTech Marine Radion XR30W G2 LED for my 125G All reef. Honestly I did not see significant growth results to my SPS. As you can see the colors do pop!
LEDs grow my LPS great. As well as MH? Probably not. But my husbandry skills have sucked this year too, so I wouldn’t be seeing any great improvements with MH or T5s either. My electric bill is lower. I like the color in my tank better. I like that I’m not spending $200+ a year replacing bulbs. My LED fixtures provide a cleaner look to the tank.
Some people are switching back to MH due tot heir own reasons, i.e. clams need more light in a deeper tank than LEDs can provide, Growth of SPS is better with MH, etc. I think that a blanket statement of “LEDS don’t grow coral” is too broad and irresponsible.
[quote=“Xtremeclownfish, post:1, topic:7841”]
Recently, I read on FB where Dr. Sanjay posted that “LEDs do not grow coral” - Almost a year since the switch. Where he shows pictures comparison.
I have tried all types of lighting, including LED’s. Bottom-line my preference are T5’s. Those of you using LED’s honestly, why is you reason you use LED’s? Are you really seeing growth in compare when you had T5’s or MH? Are you really saving on your electric bill? Do you really see your tank looking nicer with LED’s? Did you buy the LED’s because you wanted to be a part of the trend?
Would like to know your reason, and your opinion.[/quote]
Sanjay is a respected man - however, if that post on FB is true - he needs to do a little more research. It’s a completely inaccurate statement.
The reason I got into LED’s was I wanted to try something different - I’ve used all of the other types of normal lighting. I say normal because I haven’t used Solatubes or plasma lighting, but your “standard” lighting - I’ve done it. Plus - if I want to change the color from 10K to 20K, I can do it with a twist of a knob instead of having to buy new bulbs.
I’ve seen great growth with my LED’s. I’ve also had great growth with halides and T5’s. My own personal opinion - halides edge out LED’s just a little, but it’s my own personal preference.
Electric bill savings? Nope. Wattage is wattage. “Most” typical Chinese, affordable black box LED’s are either 120 or 155 watts. If I run a 150 watt DE metal halide, the power consumption is the same so there is no cost savings. To me - this is the BIGGEST misnomer of using LED’s. Your electric company doesn’t care if you’re using LED vs fluorescent vs halide vs the sun. All they care about is how many kilowatt hours you’re going through so they can charge you accordingly.
Color-wise, I believe my corals look better under LED’s, since I can dial in any color combination I want. Aesthetically pleasing - I think halides have them beat.
Orphek LED Lighting added 4 new photos.
August 30, 2014 · Edited ·
Dr. Sanjay Joshi and Joe Yaiullo stopped by to check out the new Atlantik Pendant first hand. We did some par testing and pulled out the spectrometer for some real testing and it was obvious that they were impressed.
For my part, and to establish a baseline, I had a 180 gal. 72 x 24 x 24 tank, mixed reef, but predominantly SPS, and a couple Maxima clams on the substrate. I started using a 6’ fixture made up of 3 x 250W 12,000K MH and 4 x 96W PC actinics, including about 50W for each of the balasts, this works out to about 1,300 Watts. I had good color, growth and PE. Once a year I would replace the tubes and lamps at a cost of about $350.00. I had been watching the development of the LED, and thought that I could add two fixtures(Blue Line from Champion) for about the same as it was going to cost me to replace the tubes and lamps. There were some much more expensive fixtures available, but I wasn’t ready to invest that much in an emerging technology, still in its infancy. Although there was some shift in the coloration of some of the SPS, I still had good growth and PE, and the clams were happy. These fixtures were rated at 120W, so I replace the 1300W MH/PC fixture with 250W of LED lighting. Another advantage was the fact that I didn’t have the heat; not only from the lamps, but also from the ballasts in the stand, so I no longer had to run a chiller, collectively, resulting in a significant energy savings. Ultimately I replace the two fixtures with three that had some control(Manual dimming), which gave me a little better coverage, and again replaced those with a few that had fully programmable controllers built in. I ran this tank for a number of years successfully with LED lighting.
When talking about coral growth it all comes down to kelvin temp of what the bulbs are kept at and also the spectrum of the bulbs that you are running.
I have tested with eco tek fixtures and the spectrums they have are not as good as a mh or t5 combo. You are heating the bulbs to pull that specific color out of them. With the leds it is raising the intensity of the chip to put out a amount of spectrum with min heat.
Burn Phase:
What is a Burn Phase, a burn phase is when you change the intensity of the leds, if you have no surface movement your leds will start to burn the tips of the coral or bleaching them out. One problem that faces the hobbyist now is intensity of the leds. Cree xpge are 3 w per led and are very bright. If the hobbyist does not do the research on this and what leds are in the fixture they can be causing them selves harm. A lot of leds need to be dialed down do to the intensity. With mh and t5s this is not true because they are a much softer light.
Leds V t5s v MH
We all know bulbs burn at certain kelvin temps in order to achieve the color they are going for such as 14k,20k different temps in the bulbs change the color, the same is with t5s just more condense gas spread over a long space.
Leds do not have to be heated to achieve this temp. With programmable leds you can change what ever color spectrum you want hence you can have the 14k look or the 20k look, once you get the spectrum you want and dial that into the leds you will have sps growth. Remember growth is based on good care taking stable parms and spectrum of lights.
I have ran leds and t5s and have had amazing growth and colors as well, it was a combo because the leds could not support the spectrum that the corals needed to grow. With the new leds now ( we have mitras) they have a full 8 spectrum puck of leds that I can go from 12k to 20k in a matter of 1hr if I want to.
So in all it really depends on the fixture and how you have the program set up for your color spectrum.
Ive been in the aquarium hobby just about my whole lfe and had reef tanks since 1992 with a starter tank of a 60 gallon octagon tank, and had just about every type of lighting that is out there. That being said with my tank, probably one of the bigger ones in the club I am back to MH’s after a little over a year of LED’s. My personal feeling is LED’s get the job done and do it well, but for my case I love my clams and to successfully keep clams you need a bright intense light which LED’s will give you but with that corals at the top of the tank brown or bleach out inorder to get enough light down to the bottom where alot of clams are placed. Ive lost a decent amount of clams this past year and strictly in my opinion from lack of light. I was able to save several just by moving then back in my frag tank which is under LED’s but only a 8 inch water level and 12 inches off the water level. Had 5 bounce back out of 15. My blue squamossa which was the last one I found in the whole
US passed and my blue tear drop maxima which you cant find anymore either #@$^ With what I had my LEDs set at 40% white and 80% blue and uv, color was decent but still not where I wanted it I had decent growth and color but there just seems to be for me no happy middle with them . There are people that have really good luck with them, but there are threads on just about every forum out there of people switching back to T5’s , MH, or some other form of older technology. My personnal favorite are the old T12 VHO’s watt for watt there is not much to mach the color , T5s work but a bigger bulb with more Phosphor is tough to beat. The fixture I do have now does have T5s with ATI bulbs are working pretty good and I’m very happy with it and the whole stock fixture with bulbs shipped was under $400. Bulbs that came with it were not bad but the replacement bulbs I put in are 100% better. I have already observed new growth in my SPS only after short time with the new lights.
There are LED fixtures out there I think do work better then others but the fancy AI fixtures or Radions I would need 6 and am not spending $4000 plus dollars for them,lectric bill and bulb purchase would take alot to reach that My250 mh T5 fixture is drawing about 1070 watts, my 3 LED fixtures with other lighting was drawing almost as many and did not light the tank the same. I think with time LED's will get better or the next thing will come along , untill then I'm gonna stick with what I know works for me with the size of tank I have. I have my LED's that are gonna stay over my frag tank and over my new quarentine tank but the main display ,gotta go with old reliable.
Xtreme- I think you will generally find that most people in the hobby are pretty fanatical about LED these days. I for one am NOT one of them. to be fair to LED, the look of LED is slowly getting better and prices are always coming down, but I still cannot stand the way they look. maybe im old school, but the best looking tanks IMHO are VHO/MH. personally I run T5s, only because I cant find a cheap VHO ballast since my last one burt out… anyway, here is an old thread with my long winded arguments against LED. the financial aspects are not quite as valid as they used to be.
I’m hoping to be able to contribute a little more to this discussion over the next year (as I’m currently in the process of building a tank with 3 chinese full-spectrum LED units.) But here’s what I know from my experience with Halides and my casual observations of others’ LED tanks.
There is a difference between what Halide people and LED people consider “growth”.
I’ve received several 1" SPS frags from club members that have grown into mother colonies in about 2 years under halides. What I mean by mother colony is that I have to continually trim the coral because it went from being a 1" frag to an 18" diameter colony that is touching the front and back of the tank simultaneously.
When LED people talk about growth, they seem to be talking about the coral spreading a little bit at the base and covering the plug. Maybe going from 1" to 4" over a couple years.
There really is no comparison when it comes to SPS growth. I’m sure LEDs can maintain an adult colony just fine, but I question whether you could fill out a tank starting from 1" plugs.
There is defintely something to be said about slower growth. I can’t grow coraline under Halides because the dumb corals leech the elements with every water change. I miss the purple look. Also, it’ll be nice to have a variety of corals and colors instead of just 4 or 5 dominating colonies that are constantly out of space.
Also, Halide light is intrustive. I’ve had tanks in my family room for years. Even with a canopy, the light gets everywhere. For those of you that remembered when I lived on the waterfront, you could see my reef tank from I-95… during the day. LEDS are much less intrustive into my living space and I really am looking forward to that. I like the idea of a cool blue tank instead of the mid day sun blaring away in my living room.
Like I said, I hope to contribute more when I have some LED experience under my belt. I’m really looking forward to the cost savings, the less-intrusive light, more coraline and less coral trimming.
Well here we go again, well LEDs can provide the PAR and PUR that MH and T5HO provide, the problem is getting it to.
I really think many people run their LEDs to low with not enough white or UV, because of burnt tips and the such
I think the next step in LEDs will be aiming the emitters at reflectors and using collimator lenses, this is kind of what
DIF and Kessil lights do.
Good read on this so far. I have personally only tried the AI Sols when it comes to led’s and I had nothing but problems dialing them in. I was getting algae that looked like dinoflagulates (however it is spelled). I was not happy with growth but I also did not keep them going for to long of a time period even though I did try them twice.
I did get the best growth out of my old fixture that had 2 x 250w mh and 4 t5’s.
Right now I am using just t5’s and not that happy I really miss the look and growth that the phoenix 14k’s put in the tank along with the giessman t5 bulbs.
If I do ever get back into coral and clams I would go MH all the way and just say “YES charge me extra Mr. Electric”
I also have i believe a par 38 led over my little pico tank and my sunset nuclear mushrooms do not like it. I can also see the spot lighting effect, which not all people will notice but I do and I do not like it.
" have personally only tried the AI Sols when it comes to led’s and I had nothing but problems dialing them in. I was getting algae that looked like dinoflagulates (however it is spelled). I was not happy with growth but I also did not keep them going for to long of a time period even though I did try them twice."
Like I said before it is all a spectrum thing. The MH and t5 give off the best spectrum, the more $$$$ leds give you all those options and also have active cooling where the temp of the led is cooled down to give it the right spectrum of color.
I wanted to give my experience on this topic. It seems to have generated some good discussion and I can see and have experienced the pros and cons to both sides (MH/T5 VS LED). I started my 180 gallon 72x24x24 mixed reef a little over 5 years ago. I initially had 3x250 watt MH and 4-80 T5 HO for lighting which was 1070 watts. I liked the DE Phoenix bulbs for the MH and the giesemann true actinic for the T5s. I had great success with coral growth and color and was very happy with my tank and the light. The downsides were my electric bill was high, the yearly bulb replacement and the lights ran hot. I estimate this cost for electric plus bulb replacement to be around $800-$1000 a year. I have switched to the Chinese 120watt multi color dimmable LED units about 18 months ago and have seen some changes in the tank. First I definitely noticed some change in color of my corals. When I first introduced my LEDs to the system 18 months ago I probably shocked the corals and the colors weren’t as good. Since then I have seen the corals recover and can say that the colors are almost back to the way they were with MH/T5s. Coral growth has definitely slowed down but the corals do grow under the LEDs. To sum everything up I think that MH/T5s gave better growth and color but the $800-$1000 a year savings is worth it to me for the color and growth that still occurs under the LEDs. If $$$ was not a factor I would probably go back to MH/T5s. In my opinion MH, T5, LED can all be used to keep a successful reef tank it just depends on a persons budget and personal preference. For now I’m sticking with my LEDs, but I am not against other forms of lighting.
