Ecotech Radion G5 Speculation

[gcarroll]

No question, Radions are proven to work IF you have enough of them. But clearly, even a big player like WWC uses T5 to supplement to make up for the shortcomings that are present in all LED fixtures, shadowing. Radions aren't immune to this either.

Front to back of that tank is 4 ft. The t5 supplement is 2 bulbs over the entire 4 ft, not to mention its 2 ft off the water. What shortcomings are you referring to?

Think about what you are saying. Let's just take just a third of the tank as there may be be some misunderstanding talking about a 12' display. What king of magic can be done by 2 - T5 tubes (108w total power) in a 4 ft x 4 ft area that is 30" deep (300 gallon)? Especially when you hang them 2 ft of the water. You are saying that there are such shortcomings to lighting a 300g system with 4 radions, that can be solved with 2 T5 tubes.

 

[gcarroll]

What I previously said about the 900g is that it did not get to the point it is today with Radions. So its misleading to say "Hey look at WWC 900g, it has Radions and looks spectacular" If the tank had started out from day one with Radions then the above statement would not be misleading.

Not sure on your level of experience in growing SPS however, 5 months is plenty of time to evaluate success in an SPS tank!

 

[revhtree]

No question, Radions are proven to work IF you have enough of them. But clearly, even a big player like WWC uses T5 to supplement to make up for the shortcomings that are present in all LED fixtures, shadowing. Radions aren't immune to this either.

Check out the tank at 1:15...

 

[revhtree]

Sorry the quality is HD on FB.

 

[Water Dog]

The shortcomings that I'm referring to are SHADOWS. Especially an issue in the home aquarium with mature SPS colonies. T5 supplementation clearly helps. It's like a discussion I had on here recently. Another member was adamantly extolling the virtues of his Kessils as a more than adequate as a stand alone, "pioneering" as he put it, source of LED light. Yet he still supplemented with T5s.

As far as WWC, looking at their amazing tank, clearly they know what they're doing. If a mere 108 watts of T5 over a 4'x4' area 24" above is so inconsequential, why would they bother at all?

Mind you, no where do I ever say that these premium LED brands are junk or don't work. All I ever say l, in any of these lighting discussions is that more fixtures are required for adequate coverage than what manufacturers suggest and that T5 go a long way in filling in the shadows where LEDs often have trouble addressing by themselves.

 

[Reefer525XL]

Front to back of that tank is 4 ft. The t5 supplement is 2 bulbs over the entire 4 ft, not to mention its 2 ft off the water. What shortcomings are you referring to?

Think about what you are saying. Let's just take just a third of the tank as there may be be some misunderstanding talking about a 12' display. What king of magic can be done by 2 - T5 tubes (108w total power) in a 4 ft x 4 ft area that is 30" deep (300 gallon)? Especially when you hang them 2 ft of the water. You are saying that there are such shortcomings to lighting a 300g system with 4 radions, that can be solved with 2 T5 tubes.

Obviously 2 bulbs with nothing else of course they can't do nothing. The T5's combine with the Radions is not the same as just 2 bulbs on a 4' x 4' area

 

[Reefer525XL]

Not sure on your level of experience in growing SPS however, 5 months is plenty of time to evaluate success in an SPS tank!

lol you clearly don't understand my point of view. All I ever said was that the 900g tank did not get to how it looks today with just Radions. It was lit for over a year with MH, T5 and Led and today it still has T5.

and I can grow SPS just fine.

 

[nonstopfish]

"This lighting protocol was devised to maximize coloration while not producing tremendous growth. This is one of the main show tanks at World Wide and if was necessary to prune it frequently due to rapid growth then it would detract from how impressively colored the corals in this tank look and the great first impression it makes."

I think Paletta's quote about what WWC considers success is pertinent here. They went with less Radion's because they were just looking for great color on the corals. I think most people having the "number of fixtures needed" debate are leaning more towards lots of growth being their opinion of success.

 

[revhtree]

This is a great topic though. Thanks everyone for being civil!

 

[hart24601]

Honestly I think the forums are just suffering a bit of pendulum effect. It happens with most things in our hobby, a lot of people go full bore, then something happens and we see the opposite effect and it’s repeated by people who read it even if they never experienced it. LEDs are a fantastic example in two specific cases.

I remember when people were DIY their own LEDs and eyeballing the intensity. Lots and lots of posts about bleached corals. We then as a hobby freaked out about LED intensity, so much that I have seen far most posts where people are under lighting their tank with LEDs than bleaching anymore. Not that it can’t happen, but really if you just observe the coral every day you can see it starting to bleach and reduce intensity especially if using commercial fixtures which deliver quite a bit less power than the older DIY.

We seem to be in the same blowback with shading. Yes it’s an issue. No doubt about that. More than a few people were very disappointed following the recommendations with fixtures like kessils and having shading, but we have swung back to the opposite extreme where any LED is treated as a death sentence for SPS due to shading. Honestly in this hobby right now there are not many people that even have acros that are several feet across to evaluate shading and how many fixtures are needed. I frequently wonder if the newish hobbiest getting all these fixtures will ever be able to grow colonies large enough where it’s an issue. How much talk do we give how important flow is to those huge colonies? If colonies grow big enough shading will be an issue with every light type. I remember a lot of posts back in the day about how bad MH was with shading and SPS too.


Just my thoughts about the current trends on the forums. I think there is truth and evidence for most of the viewpoints, but perhaps not quite to the extreme. Lighting get blamed for so many things in this hobby and ime we don’t talk enough about other issues like flow or SPS feeding.

 

[gcarroll]

"This lighting protocol was devised to maximize coloration while not producing tremendous growth. This is one of the main show tanks at World Wide and if was necessary to prune it frequently due to rapid growth then it would detract from how impressively colored the corals in this tank look and the great first impression it makes."

I think Paletta's quote about what WWC considers success is pertinent here. They went with less Radion's because they were just looking for great color on the corals. I think most people having the "number of fixtures needed" debate are leaning more towards lots of growth being their opinion of success.

The 900g SPS tank that I am referring to is a tank that is rarely seen. The general public is not even allowed back there. I would bet that Mike was referring to the 500g and 240g display tanks up front. The goal of the 900g was 100% to grow out brood stock for their farm. Their goal is to frag those corals and have seen them cut frags from that tank. None the less, the growth is great.

This is the first statement in the first post about the goal of this tank.

Nope! Here it is in all its glory! This is the fuel for our farm!

 

[WWC]

We do not have to use T5s with the Radions. We only did it because we had T5s lying around and we have always liked the results of T5s. Also for testing purposes we left some systems with them and some without them. Our new farm is lit up 100% with Radions without T5s. The first tank we switched to Radions was our 293g show tank 8-9months ago and we never put T5s on it and it looks spectacular, better than its ever looked right now. Hope this clears things up.

 

[hart24601]

We do not have to use T5s with the Radions. We only did it because we had T5s lying around and we have always liked the results of T5s. Also for testing purposes we left some systems with them and some without them. Our new farm is lit up 100% with Radions without T5s. The first tank we switched to Radions was our 293g show tank 8-9months ago and we never put T5s on it and it looks spectacular, better than its ever looked right now. Hope this clears things up.

Thank you for taking the time to post on this! Do you have general suggestions on spacing radions?

 

[reefwiser]

WWC could you post your radion schedule so we could see how the light looks on our radions. [emoji3]

 

[SchnitzelReef]

Or you could blame the fact you're under gunned and you need twice as many fixtures Ecotech recommends...

Ding ding ding. Folks we have a winner.

That was my problem. I Ran the AB+ schedule on 5 radions over my 8' tank, had little to no growth. I figured I would have needed 3 more minimum. 8x$700= $5600. And even then I was still rolling the dice that I would be happy with the end results.

I think I spent right around $2k for 2 ATI fixtures, and 2 Reeefbrite XHOs. I could change 16-T5 tubes once a year for quite a long time before I hit $5600.

And don't even get me started on the people who say "oh what about the electricity savings?" What electricity savings???. 8 radions would use more power than my 2 ATI fixtures.

 

[Reefer525XL]

Ding ding ding. Folks we have a winner.

That was my problem. I Ran the AB+ schedule on 5 radions over my 8' tank, had little to no growth. I figured I would have needed 3 more minimum. 8x$700= $5600. And even then I was still rolling the dice that I would be happy with the end results.

I think I spent right around $2k for 2 ATI fixtures, and 2 Reeefbrite XHOs. I could change 16-T5 tubes once a year for quite a long time before I hit $5600.

And don't even get me started on the people who say "oh what about the electricity savings?" What electricity savings???. 8 radions would use more power than my 2 ATI fixtures.

Show them your tank for the people have doubts

 

[gcarroll]

Show them your tank for the people have doubts

Here are some I took last time I was there. Got to make time to visit with the dslr!

 

[hart24601]

Ding ding ding. Folks we have a winner.

That was my problem. I Ran the AB+ schedule on 5 radions over my 8' tank, had little to no growth. I figured I would have needed 3 more minimum. 8x$700= $5600. And even then I was still rolling the dice that I would be happy with the end results.

I think I spent right around $2k for 2 ATI fixtures, and 2 Reeefbrite XHOs. I could change 16-T5 tubes once a year for quite a long time before I hit $5600.

And don't even get me started on the people who say "oh what about the electricity savings?" What electricity savings???. 8 radions would use more power than my 2 ATI fixtures.

Wow. You figured that you need 1 radion per foot of tank? Goodness.

 

[SchnitzelReef]

Wow. You figured that you need 1 radion per foot of tank? Goodness.

For an sps dominant tank, I honestly believe that's what is needed. When you have smaller sps colonies, you won't even notice a difference. But once they start growing into medium to large colonies, that's when you will need 1 per foot. I don't care how rich some hobbyists are, $5600 is a tough pill to swallow.

 

[Water Dog]

All of this WWC talk is cool... love seeing their pictures and videos. It's quite inspiring! No doubt with their multiple fixtures (read pucks) arranged either perpendicularly on their smaller display tanks or with multiple fixtures arranged both side to side as well as fore to aft on their big grow out tanks, they can do a bang up job reducing / eliminating shadows with fixture count and height positioning.

But this is a home hobbyist form. We aren't commercial grow out operations. In our homes, we cannot hang our lights 2 feet above our tanks. Most of us cannot arrange or afford multiple fixtures both in the side to side and fore to aft position over our tanks. Because most of the bigger tanks for the home hobbyist are 24" from to back, it means that most put a single fixture perpendicularly across the 24" span. At the height we keep them in our homes, either limited by canopies, home aesthetics or to prevent light spill, we are subject to shadowing. Hence the use of T5 to help address this. That, or fork over more money for more a LED fixtures.

Comparing the experiences of the home hobbiest to a commercial operation is unfair IMO.