Average life expectancy of lights

[BrianneG]

Hey Reefers.
Looking for some general thoughts and what you all expect to be the average life expectancy of aquarium lighting these days?

For instance if you were to purchase some Radion XR30 lights. And you are wanting to get the full life out of these lights, not planning on replacing them until absolutely necessary, how long would you expect them to last.

Is thier wear linear? Meaning would you expect the lifetime of the lights to be equal to each other? Would they wear equally?

 

[Troylee]

Hard to say.. I’d expect a min of 5 years but I’ve seen some still in use after 12 years but has little issues here or there as a led burned out or fans not working etc.

 

[Quietman]

My Gen 3 XR-15 have been running for over 6 years. I've had no issues with them. I'm have soft/LPS and anemones and all look great and are growing same as always.

I suspect there is some degradation at this point, but I never ran them at 100% so I could ramp them up a bit but until something shows signs of stress I'm not changing anything. Several months ago I took off my diffuser for cleaning and never put it back on, but really didn't notice any change other than the shimmer increased. Nice change so left it for a while.

I also have a Current USA IC Led bar that has no burn outs either and it's going on 5 years. It's on a freshwater tank now with spectrum adjusted.

I suspect new LEDs of any reasonable quality will last 7-10 years on average. Older gens maybe a bit less. That should do for most reefers. High end corals for reefers looking to grow/sell might get less life but that's far from what I do.

 

[X-37B]

I have 5 xr15 gen 5's. I bought all 5 used around 6/22.
4 are on systems today.
1 was replaced under warranty so it's newer than the other 4.
So I run 3 on one system and 1 on my nano with 1 unit as backup.
I may pic up another 1-2 used units just to have as backup.
I plan to run them until they die as I really like the look ab+ gives.
I expect to get another 5+ and maybe more. I run ab+ @ 100% on the nano and ab+ @ 60% on my 50.