How many of you have went back to halides or t5s

[dz6t]

Do you have a link to the trial ?
Thanks

 

[jason401]

Do you have a link to the trial ?
Thanks

here ya go dong

edit: oops, link would help huh

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2013/2/aafeature

 

[jason401]

subscribe to that site. they have great reads

 

[stingythingy45]

I would have really loved to try leds.I'm still with metal halides and have been for at least 3 1/2 year now.
The start up cost seems to be too far out of reach for me right now.
I would really like to see how much $$$ I could save on the electric bill.I don't have any more SPS since my big crash due to a broken heater.

Would led lights fire up with say,a small generator?
Just wondering as it took everything on my little 800 watt gennie to get my 2-250 halides to light.

 

[mchartier]

Would led lights fire up with say,a small generator?
Just wondering as it took everything on my little 800 watt gennie to get my 2-250 halides to light.

I run the following for equipment
Lighting - 2 AI Sol Blue Modules
Return - Waterblaster 3000
Skimmer - Alpha 170 (Red Dragon pump)
Circulation - 2 Tunze 6095s
Heaters - 2 Fluval E 250watt

All that I can run on a Tripp-Lite 1,500VA, 1,000W battery backup for 6 hours so your 800 watt Gennie could probably run my tank

 

[acrofragger]

thank you guys ...lets get back on track


so its heat and high light bill with halides ..or second generation radion and or razor for led ..1x cost of over 500 but no bulb replacement and smaller fixture


pros and cons...... pros and cons i think it comes down to the risk and if the shoe fits wear it .........halides and heat so far for me toooo

or 6 bulb plus t5s



lets also talk about what leds to stay away fromm ha

 

[P-Nut]

thank you guys ...lets get back on track


so its heat and high light bill with halides ..or second generation radion and or razor for led ..1x cost of over 500 but no bulb replacement and smaller fixture


pros and cons...... pros and cons i think it comes down to the risk and if the shoe fits wear it .........halides and heat so far for me toooo

or 6 bulb plus t5s



lets also talk about what leds to stay away fromm ha

Electricity costs vary. What is the size of your tank?

For example, a 40breeder will be fine under a 150W halide or a 150W LED. Even if you use the LED at 100W the energy savings wont be that much. Where I live it costs 0.17 cents/Kw of electricity. That extra 50W will have to be on for 20 hours to cost me 0.17cents.

You dont really save money on small tanks by switching to LED, unless you buy a $500 halide fixture, but iff you go for the cheap $100 fixture that works fine, then you might as well go with the tried and true tech.

LED s are way overpriced in my opinion, and like I always say, it is due to all those storm, cloudy programs. They do nothing for your corals. Simple ON, OFF and dimmining should be enough. I dont need to play around with my lights while im on a business trip in China.
It is a cool feature, and fun, but that is all it is, just fun.

I am not against LED, one day I will get a fixture, but not for another 4-5 years. I will let other people experiment with their money first.

Im a T5 HO person. Cheap fixtures, cheap bulbs, good growth.

 

[yukyuklee]

Look at all the grand masters on rc they all use old equipment you barely see any of them use vortechs good example

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

 

[acrofragger]

Electricity costs vary. What is the size of your tank?

For example, a 40breeder will be fine under a 150W halide or a 150W LED. Even if you use the LED at 100W the energy savings wont be that much. Where I live it costs 0.17 cents/Kw of electricity. That extra 50W will have to be on for 20 hours to cost me 0.17cents.

You dont really save money on small tanks by switching to LED, unless you buy a $500 halide fixture, but iff you go for the cheap $100 fixture that works fine, then you might as well go with the tried and true tech.

LED s are way overpriced in my opinion, and like I always say, it is due to all those storm, cloudy programs. They do nothing for your corals. Simple ON, OFF and dimmining should be enough. I dont need to play around with my lights while im on a business trip in China.
It is a cool feature, and fun, but that is all it is, just fun.

I am not against LED, one day I will get a fixture, but not for another 4-5 years. I will let other people experiment with their money first.

Im a T5 HO person. Cheap fixtures, cheap bulbs, good growth.

now thank you this is exactly the feed back we need

 

[dz6t]

Wow,really guys.Can't we just get along and put the hatchets down?

I would have really loved to try leds.I'm still with metal halides and have been for at least 3 1/2 year now.
The start up cost seems to be too far out of reach for me right now.
I would really like to see how much $$$ I could save on the electric bill.I don't have any more SPS since my big crash due to a broken heater.

Would led lights fire up with say,a small generator?
Just wondering as it took everything on my little 800 watt gennie to get my 2-250 halides to light.

If you set your mind on LED,
I think it is resonable to spend $500 to $600 for a good quality LED such as AI and Radion.
Or just go with the $200 to $300 Reef Breeders LED. I have seen them in person and very impressed by their build quality.
Spend a thousand $ on something going to change in month is not worth it IMO unless they are designed and make in Germany. There is a long history of highest quality reef equipments from Germany and they worth the money IMO.

 

[HuuTa]

Is there any long term experiment with LEP over a year out there?

 

[dz6t]

LEP has been around for 4 years mainly used for horticulture. There is a large public aquarium in Ca uses LEP to light their reef tank.
LEP is a true full spectrum light.

 

[Jarob]

Any objection to building your own LED fixture? for around ~250-300 I built one with every color possible, an LED controller which can dim each color independently, sun rise and set, etc. etc.. Ive had great growth on my Acros and ridiculous growth with my Zoas.

 

[Old Glory]

I looked at it this way. I was upgrading my tank. I had a cheap 4xT5 that I upgraded to a nice SunPower 6xT5. When I jumped to the new tank I went with MH/T5 combo over LED because I did not want to risk buying an unproven technology. I am still a Noob so I went with the proven MH system. LED was way to confusing to me and I was not going to risk all that cash on something that may not work right.

3x250W MH and 4xT5 was way easier to understand and I felt confident it was going to work for my reef.

 

[LoveTheReef]

Even Volkswagen are made in Germany And I think most of us are aware of their fail rating. I'm sorry, but saying that something built in Germany is good only because its built in Germany is quite ignorant IMO. Am I saying the lights being made in Germany are crap? No. But if someone wants to put down any light that's not made in Germany is plain not right.

For anyone seriously considering LEDs, please do an Apples to Apples comparison. When you compare the number of LEDs, total output wattage, total control (which, albeit, some of you don't give a rats a$$ about), satisfied customers, I think choices will be apparent.

As far as shelling out a lot of money -- I could not agree more. I don't consider even $500 to be a little money, let alone $1000. But if you do your research (please, read reviews from actual owners of lights instead of speculations from people with genuine hatred for a particular manufacturer because of __________), you'll see the value. Also thankfully the manufacturers also see the pain users have when newer gen lights come out; that's why they make it easy to upgrade.

There's an upgrade kit to upgrade AI SOLs to AI Vega, there's an upgrade path to upgrade Radion Gen 1 to Gen 2, there's an upgrade kit to upgrade Pacific Sun Pythons to Tritons, etc.

All leds are good -- regardless of what anyone tells you, the big manufacturers do spend a lot of time and effort on research and innovation. Sure, once they release their products, other companies can reproduce somewhat similar products at a much cheaper cost, but are they the same? Nope -- if you read the article I posted the link for earlier, you will see that not all LED manufacturers can use the higher quality bulbs. There's specific licensing that goes into it (disclaimer: the information regarding licensing is purely from that article and CREEs web site).

Anyway, to conclude, every light has its place. If someone tells you it's more economical to spend $2100 on 3 Radions to cover a 60" tank, vs $1500 on a PacificSun 2x150W Hyperion to cover a 60" tank, then I don't know what to say to that, except ... please do your homework.

For a greater level of reviews, please look at the forums on RC as well. Money is not grown on trees, and you should do your homework before spending "any" money (not just a lot of money) on a new technology. I did, and am very happy with the informed decision that I made.

 

[johnnyb]

Hey acro you had seen my tank when I had switched to the LEDs from the halides. I can tell you after this time I can not keep monties or any other hard corals. It took some fine tuning with the LEDs but I can tell you the rest of my stuff now looks great the Xenia is everywhere the zoos exploded my nems are huge and colorful. I may try another small hard coral but don't want to waste money trying again. You can swing by the house and check it out for yourself if you want.

 

[johnnyb]

Oh and I can tell you my electric savings over those halide fixtures and the heat reduction has made it all worth the expense if switching worth while. I save over 70 a month since I switched. The ac didn't have to run every day and my tanks temp has been more stable... I will never go back

 

[mchartier]

Thats funny that you have issues with montis and LEDs. i ditch all my SPS when I got my haddoni except for a pink sand dollar monti. That thing has exploded over the last 3 months. I had a Puple Haze monti that I gave away, well I guess there was some left over because I have that growing now from a piece that I was not able to see left on the rock.

I do have some red acans that are now orange but thats the only red that has changed. The wellso in my avatar is still the same red as it ever was and has been under the LEDs about 4 months longer than the acans.

Edit: Im running AI Sol blues.

 

[dz6t]

Even Volkswagen are made in Germany And I think most of us are aware of their fail rating..

VW are marketed as economic cars, they sell for the same price range of other economic cars.
They are actually no bad for their price and they don't disguise as BMW either.
Hyndai is good car too, but they just can't market them as Benz.

But we are not talking about cars here, German aquarium products are always top notch such as Tunze.

Becuase money is not grown on trees, we should go with proven technologies if we want to spend big $, or we can experiment with new techlogy without too much money. Can you tell me why AI and Radion is inferior than Pacific Sun?

Thanks

 

[dz6t]

I think it is a general misconception about LED is more expensive to buy because people are comparing t-5/MH on used market with new LED.
A high quality t-5 and halide cost around the same price range as AI and Radion and sometimes cost even more.
I think ~$500 to $600 range is very reasonable for NEW lighting fixtures.