High Tide Aquatics

MH / LED usage in 2016

What is the PRIMARY source of light for your tank. So ignore secondary enhancements.

  • Metal Halide

    Votes: 3 6.5%

  • LED

    Votes: 40 87.0%

  • T5

    Votes: 3 6.5%

  • Other???

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    46
Enderturtle said:
Gonna throw my two cents in again.

Im mainly talking about ACROPORA. Montis easier to maintain and color than acropora.

The color on acropora just seem to come out easier and deeper colors on T5s/MH than on LEDs. Winfields tank was not an acropora dominated tank.

If you scroll through the Reef Central Tank of the Months. All the acropora-dominated tanks that look good are lit by T5/MH.

And we're talking about the harder to color acros like pink milleporas, yellow acroporas, multi-colored acros.

I think we can mostly agree that tri-color acropora valida and green slimer acros are relatively easy to color and keep alive under LEDS.

LEDs will grow and color acropora but still havent seen an acropora dominated tank looking great under LEDs. The majority of people havent accomplished this. Examples are scarce. Most of the acro-addicts are sticking to T5s/MH.
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I disagree.

The contention is whether LEDs can color LEDs as well as T5/MH. Does it matter if the tank is wall to wall Acropora or full of aptiasia with 1 acro colony? Disregard all the Montiporas in @wpeterson's tank and just focus on the sticks. Am I wrong or did he win the acro grow out? Where are the pictures from that?

Seasoned acro growers are going to be reluctant to switch. Because of all the acclimation issues already mentioned. Who is going to risk thousands of dollars trying something that may kill off their colonys!?!

Look through tanks that are on LEDs from the start and sps dominant. You will see just as vibrant colors as T5/mhs as well as just as washed out and bleached as t5/mhs.

In fact, my pink mille has gone from a pale pink color to a deep pink after switching to AP700s from Hydra 52s. Frag came from a tank lit by Radions.
 
ifarmer said:
Thank you and thank you. Now you are speaking my language.


The guy in Boston that runs a 5000g tank and grows mainly stick corals (acropora) where Winfields bought corals from. He called me the other day to tell me that dont switch to LED.
He said after 10 years of research, studying and testing, said LED dont do well on acropora.
He has tried out every single LED out there even those dirt cheap chinese on ebay too.
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Thing is no one can convince anyone to switch. You will have to make that decision and you will hear what you want to hear. If you are convinced LEDs will not grow/color acro, no matter how many tanks or experiences that support that is going to change that. There will always be suspicion and disbelieve. I've been in many led vs t5/mh debates to understand that by now.

I can easily poke holes in anyone's negative LED experience just as you can with positive ones.

There really is no wrong choice in lighting. LED/T5/MH or any mixture of any. Pick your flavor and be happy with the choice!
 
Thanks to @Vhuang168 and everyone for highlighting our tank, I appreciate it. We were proud of the growth and color for mostly DBTC and cheap frags under LEDs. I'm sure folks who are connoisseurs of designer corals/colors didn't see anything exceptional in our tank, but that was by design - humble frags.

LED vs MH/T5 is a religious war - and I've seen folks do well with both. We had great growth in our tank and good color, but there are definitely folks doing different things who have had better results or coloration.

The major downside of LEDs is that fancy controllers may give people too many choices and it's easy to fall into the trap of tweaking colors/programming too often, which is likely to stress out your corals. I had a long conversation with Scott Fellman about this - many folks may have better luck with gear whose only configuration is on/off.

If you feel strongly, you should build a tank around your ideas and share your experiences with the club. I've made an effort to share our architecture, your mileage may vary. How you use your tools and their limitations shouldn't get in the way of your reef, but it should shape your ambitions.

I think @ifarmer is referencing one of the Boston Reefers turned vendor named Dong (dz6t) who is a big influence in the Boston club and was a big help/mentor to me with my first tank. He runs all kinds of gear in his huge basement farm, last I heard MH in the winter (which helps heat the whole house) and LEDs/T5s in the summer. He was the one who originally turned me on to Kessil lights. I would consider him both an expert on lighting and a pragmatist in this debate. Thanks again Dong if you read this.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
wpeterson said:
Thanks to @Vhuang168 and everyone for highlighting our tank, I appreciate it. We were proud of the growth and color for mostly DBTC and cheap frags under LEDs. I'm sure folks who are connoisseurs of designer corals/colors didn't see anything exceptional in our tank, but that was by design - humble frags.

LED vs MH/T5 is a religious war - and I've seen folks do well with both. We had great growth in our tank and good color, but there are definitely folks doing different things who have had better results or coloration.

The major downside of LEDs is that fancy controllers may give people too many choices and it's easy to fall into the trap of tweaking colors/programming too often, which is likely to stress out your corals. I had a long conversation with Scott Fellman about this - many folks may have better luck with gear whose only configuration is on/off.

If you feel strongly, you should build a tank around your ideas and share your experiences with the club. I've made an effort to share our architecture, your mileage may vary. How you use your tools and their limitations shouldn't get in the way of your reef, but it should shape your ambitions.

I think @ifarmer is referencing one of the Boston Reefers turned vendor named Dong (dz6t) who is a big influence in the Boston club and was a big help/mentor to me with my first tank. He runs all kinds of gear in his huge basement farm, last I heard MH in the winter (which helps heat the whole house) and LEDs/T5s in the summer. He was the one who originally turned me on to Kessil lights. I would consider him both an expert on lighting and a pragmatist in this debate. Thanks again Dong if you read this.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Well put.
 
It is interesting:
While the discussion on MH/T5/LED is all over the place, the poll results are VERY clear.
The poll has 85% of the people using LED. A giant margin.
Sure, 34+ people is not a huge sample, but for this club, not small either.
 
The poll shows 85% of people using LED because it is the latest technology. That is what most of the stores are selling nows aday.
I can tell you that those that got into the hobby in the last two year probably have not even heard of T5 nor MH not to mention them buying T5/MH.
The way the hobby works is that majority of the people always go for the latest and the newest even though they might not be the best.
Those that give up on LED are the one that have been in the hobby for quite sometimes and they have a lot of experiences with older lights.
When they go to try LED in hoping to phase out the old technology but then to come to find out that they dont grow and color up the ACROPORA as good as the T5/mh were.



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I have run all 3 (MH, T5 and Led) and combo of all three, here is my option, right wrong or indifferent. Best growth comes from MH if grown from small frags. Best color comes from a combo of MH with either T5 or LED, but that color is deceiving, because color is something seen with the eye, so its possible to take a very boring brown stick, put it in a tank running 10,000K MH and it will look BORING, but put that same stick in a tank running 22000k MH with combos of T5 bulbs or the right LED's and it can look amazing, you start to see other colors in it that you never saw before. However take it out of the tank and again it looks BORING.

My favorite look I had with my tank is when I ran MH and LED, I saw amazing growth, and color combos i had never seen before. Overall the tank was a little on the blue side, but I liked it. My new tank isnt going to be coral driven, and costs are a concern, so Im going with a couple of LED strip lights (Reefbrite 50/50 and a All blue Reefbrite) to start. Im really into the deep blue ocean look so I think it will work well for me, and like I said on this tank I'm not worried about how corals grow as its a FOWLR tank, that I may add some zoas, or shooms to later for fun.
 
ifarmer said:
The poll shows 85% of people using LED because it is the latest technology. That is what most of the stores are selling nows aday.
I can tell you that those that got into the hobby in the last two year probably have not even heard of T5 nor MH not to mention them buying T5/MH.
The way the hobby works is that majority of the people always go for the latest and the newest even though they might not be the best.
Those that give up on LED are the one that have been in the hobby for quite sometimes and they have a lot of experiences with older lights.
When they go to try LED in hoping to phase out the old technology but then to come to find out that they dont grow and color up the ACROPORA as good as the T5/mh were.



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Show us your tank and acros already.
 
The poll was about what people USE, not necessarily what they think is best for coral.
I kind of wish I had put both in the poll now.
It is hard to deny the non-coral benefits of LED: Lower electricity cost, less heat, no bulb swapping.
 
Old school here and started with PC lighting back in the mid 1990s and have tried all of them (PC, VHOs, T5s, MH, LEDs) sometimes together, but mostly separately. There's no doubt that both MH and T5 can grow and color the crap out of corals. I'm on the LED kick at the moment since it's something that I haven't tried long term yet and want to see for myself how it does. It's too early to tell how it'll do since the tank is so new, but it seems to be doing well so far.
 
Yeah, I started with PC lighting as well.
Then built a DIY T5 + LED, and really liked that light.
When I upgraded to my 240G tank, I went all-LED. But I have never been super happy with it.
A couple of months ago one of my drivers died, which was actually the reason I started this thread,
since I figured I needed to replace it one of these days.
Just this week another driver died, so 2 strings are out. GRR.
So expect a new lighting thread very soon from me. :)
 
2 year old tank. LEDs only.

5fef18d08daae2c94f253257c6f7deb1.jpg





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