Metal Halide and T5 Grow Corals Better Than LED and Cost Less

[Bruce Burnett]

Honest question, how do you feel about having to change the LED after 4-5 year to make up for their decay/loss in power? If we have to use more LED fixtures and have to change them every 4-5 years that ends up costing a good deal more than 4-5 year of MH bulbs, no? That said I have some "high-end" LEDS, but am weighing the truth of the replacement / power cost claims of late. The second half, power consumption, is more complicated question as we have to consider tank depth / MH wattage to LED Wattage and any cooling issues/costs.

Well I was believing MH was better but was doing well with Orphek leds. Right now I have smaller tank 36x24x24. I have two reefi uno over it. Had a couple of frags die running them about 60% output. Down to peak day about 40% everything is doing well. Tank is 7 months old. Have a clam about 4 months it has grown 30-40 percent. At 40 percent power lights give off no heat and will lasts much longer than 4-5 years. Even the lights being brighter don't think it caused coral loss. Two frags out of 20 in a new tank and had a dino outbreak. Had zero nitrates and .02 phosphate, brought nitrates up by dosing neophos. Kept lights lower and shorter cycle dino completely gone in two days. Today my rock and sand look like the day I put them in with a few spots of coralline. Almost every fish and snail is about cleanup. Even the couch snails.

 

[outhouse]

Honest question, how do you feel about having to change the LED after 4-5 year to make up for their decay/loss in power? If we have to use more LED fixtures and have to change them every 4-5 years that ends up costing a good deal more than 4-5 year of MH bulbs, no? That said I have some "high-end" LEDS, but am weighing the truth of the replacement / power cost claims of late. The second half, power consumption, is more complicated question as we have to consider tank depth / MH wattage to LED Wattage and any cooling issues/costs.

You dont have change out leds that quickly. I'm 7 ish years I believe and I had to turn mine down to 8% intensity. These will still be running 15 years from now unless I get itchy fingers for modern electronics with moon and sunset/sunrise features. When leds are under driven they last longer than 50k hours.

 

[Bruce Burnett]

You dont have change out leds that quickly. I'm 7 ish years I believe and I had to turn mine down to 8% intensity. These will still be running 15 years from now unless I get itchy fingers for modern electronics with moon and sunset/sunrise features. When leds are under driven they last longer than 50k hours.

Agree but with the reefi uno at $400 you get 180 watts of led power with clouds and moonlight cycle. Not going to replace unless they fail after warranty. Longest warranty out there.

 

[outhouse]

Agree but with the reefi uno at $400 you get 180 watts of led power with clouds and moonlight cycle. Not going to replace unless they fail after warranty. Longest warranty out there.

Right!!!!

I dont even have that, 3 ocean revives, which in there day were fancy black boxs, now with supplemental 2 luminbars for UV I get sunrise and sunsets

That color control would be nice but im home the last 2 hours tank lights are on, so no big deal

 

[damsels are not mean]

Honest question, how do you feel about having to change the LED after 4-5 year to make up for their decay/loss in power? If we have to use more LED fixtures and have to change them every 4-5 years that ends up costing a good deal more than 4-5 year of MH bulbs, no? That said I have some "high-end" LEDS, but am weighing the truth of the replacement / power cost claims of late. The second half, power consumption, is more complicated question as we have to consider tank depth / MH wattage to LED Wattage and any cooling issues/costs.

I would recommend to everyone to just build their own fixtures or buy kits honestly, but even with prebuilts you are saving as I don't think 4-5 years is the reality unless you are driving your LEDs at max all the time. The fixtures on the market are so overpriced IMO considering how easy it is to string LEDs together.

You can swap individual LEDs on a custom build as they go bad and the whole fixture is significantly cheaper (something like 50% in fact) than an equivalent pre-built. The kits are no harder than a lego set or a custom PC. You can also customize spectrum without as much channel fiddling as you would with a prebuilt. My tank has the same types of LEDs you'd find in an AI fixture, but the color balance is built in so I don't have to adjust the channels much and I mainly just use them for the morning and evening ramps. Few weeks ago I replaced some of the burned out LEDs for a pretty small charge. The chips only cost a couple $ each and I had this fixture running for 6 years. If I don't like the colors... I can change it! If I need more power, I can add it! If I need less, I can just turn them down.

 

[damsels are not mean]

As we see here in the forum, lately many people are leaving their LEDs and going back to halide and/or T5 to lit their home reef tanks.
This is an article I found from Marine Depot, one of the oldest and most reliable sources of equipment since 1998:

Metal Halide and T5 Grow Corals Better Than LED and Cost Less—Why Not Keep It Old School?

Learning Center - Bulk Reef Supply

Learn about saltwater aquariums and reef tanks with Bulk Reef Supply. Our extensive collection of videos and educational articles focus on teaching you how to become a better aquarium owner.

blog.marinedepot.com

1. Where is the data? I have only seen anecdotes. Most people who grow corals for a living use LEDs now it seems, though that may be due to heat and cost advantages as well as the ability to go blue for pop...

2. Do I need to grow the coral better (whatever that means)? I'm gonna have to frag an acro colony back frequently within 2 years of it being a new frag either way. I say pick whatever you think looks best and fits your practical needs. If that's halides, pick halides. If it's LEDs or T5 pick those. I prefer LEDs and I won't ever get halides on any new tanks as I have not seen any reason to switch except anecdotes from nostalgic folks. Many of my "gurus" have switched to LEDs and don't complain.

3. I think it's a bad look for people in an industry that already has a horrible public environmental image to pick by far the least environmentally friendly lighting we can. We are already losing wild collection in a lot of places (despite evidence that it can be sustainable when done right) and we might not have a hobby at all if this trend continues. We should want to be extra conscious of our footprint.

 

[outhouse]

. Where is the data?

Right!!! i think he is using the salesman pitch, of course BRS wants to sell bulbs and will love to keep old school stuff alive.

 

[outhouse]

I have only seen anecdotes

The problem is the amount of it. There are thousands of post about MH growing better, there are not an equal number of post about leds, matter of fact, you ever see a thread that says my leds are outgrowing my old MH set up? I have not.

It took me a while to figure the trick out with leds, turn them down!!! To intense and you slow growth, turn them down and now growth is awesome.

What I saw was a 35% increase in growth using MH at best of times. Im sure people with SPS who have more skill than I do, would sharpen that number up,

But even at 35% I wont go back to MH, and prefer leds

 

[oreo54]

The problem is the amount of it. There are thousands of post about MH growing better, there are not an equal number of post about leds, matter of fact, you ever see a thread that says my leds are outgrowing my old MH set up? I have not.

That is a skewed perspective.. For one thing few that start out "today" probably never had MH's or just mh's or just t5's..
Those 1000's of posts are really a handful of users.
Many old LED's were inefficient and frankly poorly designed and poorly used not to mention really bad information from marketers.

Then there is the false equivalency (somewhat based on the above said bad marketing) where led replaced MH's with
little regard for keeping par values equal of even like you found a bit lower... or even a very short period of "testing".
One of my more popular (or unpopular) questions is what did you have before and what did you replace it with and what were the settings?
My "observation" is usually they replace things like the falsely labelled black boxes, run at nowhere near 100% and add like 50% more photons or more. Gee why are they growing faster??

Photosynthetic and corals adapt but not always easily to changes.


Then there is the speed of growth is only one consideration unless of course your are a "manufacturer" of corals.. well growth and color I suppose.

NOW KEEP in mind that all th above is just outside observation and there really is little or no real evidence.
I do believe (even as one who most would consider an led err "fanatic") ther are differences and maybe eve in growth with various species.

I do not believe in any "global" MH's are better than LEDs..but there is an ease of use factor and less possibility of screwing things up.
There may be something to the statement of "err "best" but certainly the amount of "emotion" behind it is way overblown based on the current amount of LED usage and successes.

Like "thousands" have said, when properly applied all light sources work..
Every individual needs to consider their own needs/wants and base their choices accordingly.
BRS had a really good vid on the "history" of LED useage that I wished I'd bookmarked.
Thier direct knowledge mirrored my observations over time quite well including a lot of led bashing in the very beginning.
You know one of the sad parts is some long dead led manufacturers really had cutting edge lighting that if they manged to survive would have advanced leds quicker.
There are warts and unknowns yet... but thinking the hobby is going back to old school lighting is pretty unrealistic.

"Best wars" are just human nature I guess..

The Best Lamp Is…

Recent research has suggested a 'best lamp' - but some caveats exist!

reefs.com

Lighting the Reef Aquarium – Spectrum or Intensity?

This month Dana and Miguel discuss the importance of spectrum and intensity of aquarium lighting.

reefs.com

and in an ironic sort of way..

CORAL Magazine Excerpt: Seeing The Light

Author Mike Paletta examines his unorthodox approach to adding LED Lighting over his 300 gallon reef aquarium.

www.reef2rainforest.com

There was no consensus among the opinions I sought, just as there isn’t in just about any aspect of the hobby, but after much debate I chose the Radion Pro. It was chosen for several reasons: First, it produced what I considered the best lighting spectrum I had seen over a tank. That is, while the tank had the blue cast that I prefer, the colors of the corals remained true. Like most LEDs, it really brought out the blues, purples, and greens in SPS corals, but did so without making pink or yellow corals lose their colors or look faded. This was important, as one of the shortcomings of using the 20K Radiums for so long was that pink Stylophora or Seriatopora corals lost their vivid pink colors when lit by these bulbs over time, and even worse, anything yellow would eventually begin to look green under these lights. Second—and I had learned this the hard way in the past—you can’t just put LEDs over a tank at full intensity and hope for the best. When I had done this in the past with early LEDs, their intense, focused light had produced significant burning and bleaching in any corals below them.

Nothing is perfect eh..

How to grow the most colorful SPS corals | Reef Builders | The Reef and Saltwater Aquarium Blog

During the course of history men have always searched for the unobtainable. The knights of King Arthur searched for the Holy Grail, Captain Ahab obsessed about a white whale, in similar fashion we…

reefbuilders.com

 

[Nano sapiens]

1. Where is the data? I have only seen anecdotes. Most people who grow corals for a living use LEDs now it seems, though that may be due to heat and cost advantages as well as the ability to go blue for pop...

While what is 'best' will always be subjective, this paper shows that switching from MH and T5 to LED provided better coral coloration and growth for this wholesale grower :

Reef Wholesale (EcoTech Coral Lab)

And this was with now older Radion G3s.

My takeaway is that one can achieve great results from any of these reef aquarium suitable lighting types when applied correctly.

 

[ATXreefer]

While what is 'best' will always be subjective, this paper shows that switching from MH and T5 to LED provided better coral coloration and growth for this wholesale grower :

Reef Wholesale (EcoTech Coral Lab)

And this was with now older Radion G3s.

My takeaway is that one can achieve great results from any of these reef aquarium suitable lighting types when applied correctly.

While It’s clear that awesome coral coloration and growth can be achieved with LED, I can’t help but find this “study” a bit suspect. I could be mistaken, but it appears that reef wholesale is supported by ecotech to at least some degree, which is a conflict of interest. IMO, studies or papers supported by companies (in this case a prolific led manufacturer), delegitimizes the results to some extent.

 

[rtparty]

The 4-5 year replacement for LED fixtures is quickly becoming truth. It's not always the LEDs that have issues but other components start failing and then the LEDs suffer from this.

Of course, some LED fixtures will last longer and some won't. It's actually surprising how many fixtures are dying around 2 years.

Just like halides and T5s, just because your LEDs light up doesn't mean they are performing the same as day 1. I can get T5s to last 3+ years no problem. Doesn't mean it's what is best for my animals. Simply lighting up is not a gauge for how well a light is working

Tullio at ReefBrite has said all the data points to year 4 being the time that LEDs start shifting spectrum and degrading. Other big names have stated roughly the same thing. Many of them automatically replace fixtures around years 3-5.

It's a major blow for those using $1000 LED fixtures. If you have to spend $2-3000 every 4 years to replace whole fixtures, you are spending WAY more than those of us that replace halide bulbs every 14-18 months. In 5 years, I might have to replace a ballast. Couple hundred bucks and I'm done.

The biggest lie we've ever been told in this hobby is that LEDs will save money.

 

[Ryan Avery]

1. Where is the data? I have only seen anecdotes. Most people who grow corals for a living use LEDs now it seems, though that may be due to heat and cost advantages as well as the ability to go blue for pop...

2. Do I need to grow the coral better (whatever that means)? I'm gonna have to frag an acro colony back frequently within 2 years of it being a new frag either way. I say pick whatever you think looks best and fits your practical needs. If that's halides, pick halides. If it's LEDs or T5 pick those. I prefer LEDs and I won't ever get halides on any new tanks as I have not seen any reason to switch except anecdotes from nostalgic folks. Many of my "gurus" have switched to LEDs and don't complain.

3. I think it's a bad look for people in an industry that already has a horrible public environmental image to pick by far the least environmentally friendly lighting we can. We are already losing wild collection in a lot of places (despite evidence that it can be sustainable when done right) and we might not have a hobby at all if this trend continues. We should want to be extra conscious of our footprint.

Preach brotha

 

[Nano sapiens]

While It’s clear that awesome coral coloration and growth can be achieved with LED, I can’t help but find this “study” a bit suspect. I could be mistaken, but it appears that reef wholesale is supported by ecotech to at least some degree, which is a conflict of interest. IMO, studies or papers supported by companies (in this case a prolific led manufacturer), delegitimizes the results to some extent.

From what I can see on their website, Reef Wholesale (RW) is a coral importer and aquaculture specialist in Canada and is a distributor for EcoTech. Per their website, they continue to use EcoTech for lighting their coral business.

In this study the author(s) are implying that other parameters that can affect coral health, growth and coloration were equal/very similar for both the previous MH/T5s and later the LEDs. The documented photographic evidence that the LEDs are contributing to what many would perceive as high quality corals is compelling, but your skepticism is healthy and noted (I pondered the same thing).

Personally, I find it hard to believe that the photographs were intentionally altered to favor the results from the EcoTech as many prominent reef keepers have shown similar results using EcoTech's lighting. However, there is always the possibility that other contributing factors shifted over the time of this study (whether knowingly or not) and that the end results may not truly reflect 'apples to apples'.

 

[Bpb]

The 4-5 year replacement for LED fixtures is quickly becoming truth. It's not always the LEDs that have issues but other components start failing and then the LEDs suffer from this.

Of course, some LED fixtures will last longer and some won't. It's actually surprising how many fixtures are dying around 2 years.

Just like halides and T5s, just because your LEDs light up doesn't mean they are performing the same as day 1. I can get T5s to last 3+ years no problem. Doesn't mean it's what is best for my animals. Simply lighting up is not a gauge for how well a light is working

Tullio at ReefBrite has said all the data points to year 4 being the time that LEDs start shifting spectrum and degrading. Other big names have stated roughly the same thing. Many of them automatically replace fixtures around years 3-5.

It's a major blow for those using $1000 LED fixtures. If you have to spend $2-3000 every 4 years to replace whole fixtures, you are spending WAY more than those of us that replace halide bulbs every 14-18 months. In 5 years, I might have to replace a ballast. Couple hundred bucks and I'm done.

The biggest lie we've ever been told in this hobby is that LEDs will save money.

Agree on all of that. I just wish (for me personally) there were some way to manage the heat and humidity caused by them. That was the death blow for me. Chiller size, power, cost, and maintenance puts the overall cost of lighting up there in top shelf led territory. And fans evaporate 2-3 gallons of water a day, causing mold and rust all over the house, shooting humidity inside up in the 80+% range. Add a commercial size dehumidifier and I’m sunk another thousand dollars and running 800-1000 watts 24/7. It’s just too much to manage for me. Which is a shame. I really love 10k metal halides. Best light to use. Period

 

[outhouse]

The 4-5 year replacement for LED fixtures


It's a major blow for those using $1000 LED fixtures. If you have to spend $2-3000 every 4 years to

I've seen some of this true for kessils

Me? I'm 7 years going strong for $700. With leds and these lights have 10 years easy left.

The 50,000 hours your basing life expectancy is if they are ran at 100% intensity.

Running less intensity means you can get 200,000 hours or more. Mine were rated at 100,000 hours at 100%

 

[outhouse]

Do the math for MH. 3 bulbs a year let's call it 100, not counting electricity cost which is a lot more than bulbs, makes leds the best choice. If one chooses wisely

 

[rtparty]

Do the math for MH. 3 bulbs a year let's call it 100, not counting electricity cost which is a lot more than bulbs, makes leds the best choice. If one chooses wisely

This is such a blanket statement that it is a little ridiculous.

My electricity is dirt cheap where I live. My tank is in my basement. My heaters ran non stop when I had LEDs. Since switching back to halides, my electric bill hasn't changed one bit. I went from 150w of LEDs to close to 600w of T5s and halides. So for ME, it's a wash. For others, it wouldn't be.

I'd also never use 99% of the LEDs on the market. I've tried the majority of them and none of them do what I want.

This is just for ME and MY situation though. Others will have a different experience and they have to decide for themselves what makes the most sense. This is why large blanket statements don't work.

It has proven for years that LEDs aren't going to save money for the average hobbyist. That's okay though. Some enjoy them and they should.

 

[rtparty]

Agree on all of that. I just wish (for me personally) there were some way to manage the heat and humidity caused by them. That was the death blow for me. Chiller size, power, cost, and maintenance puts the overall cost of lighting up there in top shelf led territory. And fans evaporate 2-3 gallons of water a day, causing mold and rust all over the house, shooting humidity inside up in the 80+% range. Add a commercial size dehumidifier and I’m sunk another thousand dollars and running 800-1000 watts 24/7. It’s just too much to manage for me. Which is a shame. I really love 10k metal halides. Best light to use. Period

This goes to my post above. We all have different scenarios and must choose what works for us.

I'd really like to see a lot of people try lower wattage halides to be honest. If corals really don't need as much light as we give them, a lot of people could have gone from 250w halides to 150w and that could make a noticeable difference if you're running multiple fixtures.

Throw in LED bars for the pop and fill light and you can run the halides less. I run mine 4 hours a day.

 

[EyeCandyCoral]

Finally something I can agree with I don't care what anybody says metal halide grow corals better than LEDs all day long