Going back to MH

[Faurek]

Honestly going from 0 to mh at this point is a steep investment for probably short time, eventually there will be only LED's, they could be better then they are, but people just seem to like neon Windex blue and companies don't want to spend money on a good product.

 

[X-37B]

Honestly going from 0 to mh at this point is a steep investment for probably short time, eventually there will be only LED's, they could be better then they are, but people just seem to like neon Windex blue and companies don't want to spend money on a good product.

Not a fan of the windex look myself.
You can run your leds with a very white halide look. Check my earlier post here.
Although mine at 30% appears windex like in the photo it's not in person.
It just that so may run it that way because all lfs run it that way, imo.

 

[Faurek]

Imo the advantage of metal halide is not the white, it's true uv and ir, bet that is the sauce.

 

[CHSUB]

Hard to really tell if MH, imo, had better growth or not. I run plant grow lights in addition to typical reef leds over my tank so look is similar to MH of my past experience. Happy with growth and imo, not worth the extra effort of MH. JMHO….

 

[ChrisfromBrick]

Yup.....I have old unused phoenix 250's and 4 new ballasts I bought as back up. I've tried LED over and over throughout the past 10 years and none grow corals as fast as MH. Coral colors are better tho, but to stock my personal clients tanks the best growth rate I got from G6's over the past year was about half as fast as MH. I think most hobbyists can enjoy the slower growth with great colors that LED's provoke. But when you have clients wanting to fill in the empty spaces in their tanks.....I used to throw out acropora frags due to the ridiculously fast growth with MH. Too bad everyone dumped MH, hard to find gear for that these days...

couldnt agree more, accept that I got that years ago with the ATI sunpower t5 6 bulb. Could not believe how fast it grew the sticks. I also did MH and got same results.

Right now im running 2 kessils (not impressed at all with the PAR and shadowing) and one quanta bar. Im either going back to t5 or I am going to go the light bar route. The quantas throw a ton of par out. Even the Meso blues.

 

[Faurek]

Hard to really tell if MH, imo, had better growth or not. I run plant grow lights in addition to typical reef leds over my tank so look is similar to MH of my past experience. Happy with growth and imo, not worth the extra effort of MH. JMHO….

I did think about that option years ago with diy blue and violet LED's to complement, I did see that some of those mh lamps had the true uv and ir, depending on the station to replicate.
I am curious of what you are running in detail.

 

[CHSUB]

I did think about that option years ago with diy blue and violet LED's to complement, I did see that some of those mh lamps had the true uv and ir, depending on the station to replicate.
I am curious of what you are running in detail.

Nothing diy if that is your question? My last MH was 400 watt 14k bulbs with t5 blue and purple, very natural and bright with still some pop with the t5. Now I’m running Red Sea 50 and FECiDA LED Grow Light 6000 Lumen 65 Watt, 2024 Best Grow Lights for Indoor Plants Full Spectrum. It’s very white and daylight looking with the Red Sea Reef Light giving the pop of blue. It is very close to what I got with my MH set up and coral growth is great and compares to my memories of MH. Two reasons I run this set up are I like the look and have mangroves.

 

[SumpinFishy]

Interesting thread. I'm still really new to all this. So I am wondering, why could MH be better? You can say you found better coral growth, but i wonder why? I'm not a scientist, I would imagine it's a light wave thing? Does mh bring a specific band of color and a good led just needs to be tuned? Man there is so much to all this, and it crazy how some little thing changes the dynamic and figuring out what it is, can be really challenging.

 

[ChrisfromBrick]

Interesting thread. I'm still really new to all this. So I am wondering, why could MH be better? You can say you found better coral growth, but i wonder why? I'm not a scientist, I would imagine it's a light wave thing? Does mh bring a specific band of color and a good led just needs to be tuned? Man there is so much to all this, and it crazy how some little thing changes the dynamic and figuring out what it is, can be really challenging.

Its a very intense light source and I believe the UV that it emits is much more powerful than your standard LED UV range.

 

[Faurek]

Didn't have food in me yet, sorry. I read that you were running plant growth mhm lamps complemented with reef LED's for the pop.
But that is interesting as well, since I have been tinkering with grow LED's for reef.
First I had an 8 gallon with grow strips on top, corals were so open I can't even explain, those strips had one blue, one red and one warm white and would just repeat this the whole length.
After that I tried 3w grow LED chips on a 21 gallon, at some point those were the only LED's on for like a month and acros grew.
Now on my 3.5 gallon pico I have a little of those grow LED's and warm whites, nothing did beat the strip tbh, and the strip was putting out a pink/purple Windex like color with a lot of fluorescents, most important was crazy polyp extension tho.

 

[oreo54]

Its a very intense light source and I believe the UV that it emits is much more powerful than your standard LED UV range.

Actually UV output of MH's vary by bulb/manuf/fixture.
UV LED's can easily exceed UV output IF one chooses to add enough.
Problem is mostly longevity. Most are shorter lived than your royal blue led.

The UV = something is mostly speculative anyways.
Also keep in mind t5 only tanks have very little UV output and are successful.

That UV damages living things is well known and documented.
So it's sort of a give/take thing I suppose.

Chart of actual power output of 2 esteemed bulbs. Note the 6500k (growth monster) charts over 2x the "par" of a 20000k Radium. About the same amount of UV. Believe there is a small spike in UV-b not shown.
Nobody has a clue as to what "IR" does really...(>800nm)

As a side note.. Intense 660nm red has been known and used to bleach corals.

 

[Faurek]

Actually UV output of MH's vary by bulb/manuf/fixture.
UV LED's can easily exceed UV output IF one chooses to add enough.
Problem is mostly longevity. Most are shorter lived than your royal blue led.

The UV = something is mostly speculative anyways.
Also keep in mind t5 only tanks have very little UV output and are successful.

That UV damages living things is well known and documented.
So it's sort of a give/take thing I suppose.

Chart of actual power output of 2 esteemed bulbs. Note the 6500k (growth monster) charts over 2x the "par" of a 20000k Radium. About the same amount of UV. Believe there is a small spike in UV-b not shown.
Nobody has a clue as to what "IR" does really...(>800nm)

As a side note.. Intense 660nm red has been known and used to bleach corals.

660 LED's put out a lot of par, even tho they can help chlorophyll I don't believe they are very good to put in a fixture for most people. Warm whites and grow LED's are the best options imo, since I diy I can pick and choose what I want.

Don't think we should just skimp on IR because we don't know what it does, but there has to be a purpose for growth, shore corals and algae get a lot of it and I have never seen macroalgae growing as fast as in the ocean, which means that probably contributes either to chlorophyll or other.

 

[ChrisfromBrick]

Actually UV output of MH's vary by bulb/manuf/fixture.
UV LED's can easily exceed UV output IF one chooses to add enough.
Problem is mostly longevity. Most are shorter lived than your royal blue led.

The UV = something is mostly speculative anyways.
Also keep in mind t5 only tanks have very little UV output and are successful.

That UV damages living things is well known and documented.
So it's sort of a give/take thing I suppose.

Chart of actual power output of 2 esteemed bulbs. Note the 6500k (growth monster) charts over 2x the "par" of a 20000k Radium. About the same amount of UV. Believe there is a small spike in UV-b not shown.
Nobody has a clue as to what "IR" does really...(>800nm)

As a side note.. Intense 660nm red has been known and used to bleach corals.

This is one of a few reasons why I think im going to go all t5 on my new tank. Thanks for clarifying.