Anybody who wants to believe this should watch this all the way through... or at least from about 24 minutes. This backs up everything that people with actual experience have seen over their tanks.
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You should list it and correct it for others.jda convinced me a few years ago on a different forum to light my 8' x 3' tank with MHs. I'm glad he did. I don't think he is being rude. He is clearly right and there is a lot of incorrect information in this thread.,
Overall cost wasn't what the o/p asked about. Pretty sure it's obvious that a $300 mh ballast/reflector/400 w bulb is more expensive than a 320w led at $800.in terms of lighting up a wide area for the lowest overall price, I don't think it is even close in terms of comparing MH to LED.
Obviously If the challenges of metal halide lamps are able to be managed for you I can’t think of a good reason to switch lighting methods. Theory is fine all day but if your tank is trucking along as is and you’re not unhappy I don’t think changing will make you happier
Orig op question ....However, I live in Florida and my primary motivation to possible consider moving away from MH would be to cut down on heat transfer to the water (and the room ), thus decreasing house A/C usage, aquarium chiller usage, evaporation, and humidity. Even if it would only be possible to cut down on these a small amount, I feel that it could add up over time due to the volume of water. Also, avoiding having to replace constantly replace bulbs to maintain maximum performance and PAR would be a nice benefit on decreasing the maintenance routine a bit
Thought these might be a more cost-effective solution versus buying 10-15 LED pucks at $600-800 a piece. Searched and didn't find much on this, I'm assuming since even the smallest ones would be way overkill for most tanks...
Overall cost wasn't what the o/p asked about. Pretty sure it's obvious that a $300 mh ballast/reflector/400 w bulb is more expensive than a 320w led at $800.
Orig op question ....
That is for them to decide.the one area of contention I have here is if someone is SWITCHING, that argument doesn’t hold. If someone is setting up a brand new tank, it is absolutely something to consider, seeing as startup costs will be a lot closer than they are given credit for if purchasing all new hobby grade gear. But if someone already owns working MH gear (like the OP) and is considering a switch, I would expect Savings to generally be out of the discussion entirely, and for other tangible factors to be at play. Such as heat/humidity management, overall aesthetics, ect
That is for them to decide.
Obviously the op thinks they have an "issue".
There is no doubt mh's transfer more heat down and into the water than led's.
Do we agree?
320w vs 400w is less heat
Agree?
My lfs has a large tank, around 1200g and it’s at least 48” if not more. They swapped from using mh to those maxspect units and last I spoke with them they were really happy and in that tank with acros and mixed corals they seemed to outperform the MH.
The manager Tim is nice and loves to talk reef. I suggest you give Iowa seascapes a call and ask to talk with Tim about it. I don’t have their number but you can call them. I think they replaced 2 1000w units with 4 maxspect but I can’t remember for sure.
the one area of contention I have here is if someone is SWITCHING, that argument doesn’t hold. If someone is setting up a brand new tank, it is absolutely something to consider, seeing as startup costs will be a lot closer than they are given credit for if purchasing all new hobby grade gear. But if someone already owns working MH gear (like the OP) and is considering a switch, I would expect Savings to generally be out of the discussion entirely, and for other tangible factors to be at play. Such as heat/humidity management, overall aesthetics, ect
To be clear, because perhaps I wasn't in my original post, I already have the MH gear that is more or less brand new from a previous build. This is for a new build but with already "broken in" gear.
However, the only rationale behind even considering a switch to LED would be for heat transfer mitigation and the en-suing decreased costs of chiller use/room ac/evaporation. AND ONLY if there was an LED option that could be swapped out one MH fixture for a single LED fixture. That's all.
Thanks for the discussion, all of you have given me much to think about, and I promise never again to touch any of the other third rails of reef-dom... : "sand or no sand", and "acrylic or glass" LoL ;Hilarious
As a thought experiment, which I'm actually quite interested in as I'm about to move to a warmer climate...
Assume we had a 400watt LED fixture and a 400w MH fixture over our tank, which we all agree are going to produce 400watts of heat. The 400w MH fixture is going to radiate most of the heat downwards into the tank and some amount in the surrounding air. The LED fixture is going to concentrate the heat around the heatsink, which will radiate into the surrounding air around the heatsink.
With the MH bulbs, a lot of the heat is going to be absorbed by the water, and then very slowly radiated out into the surrounding air (assuming a house with a relatively normal ambient temperature). With LEDs, the heat is just radiating directly into the air.
Is the supposed advantage of LEDs is that the heat radiating into the air is easier to deal with, or that we expect to get by with less overall wattage and therefore less heat, or both? The maxspect website is making the argument that you can get by with less wattage, but obviously there are conflicting views about that (third rail of reefing!).
I can imagine situations where with some intelligent ventilation you could export the heat from the LEDs to the outside pretty efficiently, is that the idea? Otherwise in a closed environment (like a house), no matter whether it is LEDs or MHs producing the wattage, the A/C is going to eventually have to deal with the heat just the same.
Something else to consider is you generally don’t apply the same amount of par with leds that you do with halides. I would not hesitate to throw 400+ par at an lps coral with 14,000k metal halides but you
Better believe I wouldn’t do that with an led fixture. Same goes for sps corals. I’d not hesitate to hit an acropora or montipora with upwards of 1000 par with a metal halide, but I wouldn’t really flirt with much more than 400 par on an led fixture.
I’m not arguing spectral quality or growth effectiveness. I’m just saying that watt per watt isn’t exactly an apples to apples comparison. I went from 500 watts of metal halide providing about 600 par on average at the top of the rocks to roughly
About 200 watts of led lighting providing around 400 par at the top of the rocks which is about as high as I’d go.
The metal halide pendants were nearly too hot to touch when running and my arm would start to bake uncomfortably when working in the tank directly under them. I was evaporating 2.5+ gallons per day in my little 1200 sqft house. Running 80%+ humidity inside, AC running literally constantly, getting rust all over metal fixtures and vents inside the home and tons of mildew.
The led fixture runs literally cool to the touch at 200 watts and I evap about 0.5 gallons per day now.
I’ll reiterate. I LIKE metal halide lighting. I love the look and I love it functionally. It is a zero effort lighting source that is virtually infallible from a growth and color standpoint. I’m just getting at switching may not always be a direct watt per watt equivalent depending on your application. And that I completely sympathize with the OP. When you’re in a hot climate, the heat and humidity can become a very real problem
This is very much a lower wattage argument. You switched from 500 watts of high quality lighting to 200 watts of high quality lighting. You had excess light before, you lowered the lighting to a level that was still fine for your goals and everything was great. But it isn't necessarily a convincing data point for this thread.
I went from 500 watts of metal halide providing about 600 par on average at the top of the rocks to roughly
About 200 watts of led lighting providing around 400 par at the top of the rocks which is about as high as I’d go.
There are now some LEDs pushing 190 lumens/watt. Check out the Samsung LM301b/h. There are a bunch of companies using boatloads of these cheap-as-chips chips running in their peak efficiency band to produce low cost grow lights....
Current LED's are producing 100-140 Lumens/watt. Each color differs though and like w/ the LUX problem non-white colors on the edges of the Lumen chart usually are not measured in Lumens but in mW..
...
There are now some LEDs pushing 190 lumens/watt. Check out the Samsung LM301b/h. There are a bunch of companies using boatloads of these cheap-as-chips chips running in their peak efficiency band to produce low cost grow lights.
Not so useful for salt water aquariums, but still, LEDs for broader application markets are reaching the efficiencies and economies of scale we hoped for in the aquarium hobby a few years back.