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Has anyone factored in the cost of corals lost and fried during the tuning stage of LEDs as an added cost?
I know you run the risk with T5 and Halide bulb changes but the odds are much less. I am a T5 guy all the way. I am in the hobby to get the most color out of my corals and the little added cost is worth it too me. LEDs definitely work on the higher models. Proof is there. I did a swap this weekend and all my corals are under T5 and some of them looked like garbage under the LED fixture I ran at the swap. I could not pull any of the pinks or oranges. Needless to say I did not sell any of those. It was interesting though how big of a difference the frags looked. I hated the colors the swap tank corals looked compared to what I know they look like.
My preference.
Agreed^^^ Sums it up right there. It's your preference. LEDs, MH, t5 are all good choices for reef lighting.
I haven't fried a coral with my LEDs yet and I run them at 100%. No tuning or learning curve.
I think part of the hate for LEDs is from your statement. People take coral from a MH or T5 tank and put them under LEDs and say "oh my T5s are better". You can't move corals from one lighting to another and compare. You have to let the corals color up under the lighting. I've bought corals from MH tanks with good color but they look like dirt in my led tank at first. After they settle in the colors are as good as the MH tank. I also took some corals to a frag swap but I did the opposite of you. My corals looked like garbage under t5s.
Photons of light are photons of light. LED, T5, MH, they are all the same. There is nothing fundamentally different about the light they produce, now matching spectrum and intensities is not always easy, but light is the same. The real difference, if spectrum is complete, seems to be with the point source nature of LED lights, large colones tend to self shade unless lit from multiple angles like how you can mount the maxspect mazrra system. I hope eventually LEDs can be mounted with a specialized reflector, almost like what the dentist use, where they light shines away into the reflector and then it illuminates the target not directly from the source, but from the reflector.
I have been reading lately that led do not produce nearly as much radiation as mh and t5. Par stands for photosynthic available radiation. To produce this radiation led have to use much more intensity than t5 and mh. The way this was explained was pigment in coral are similar to.pigment in human skin. This is where the absorption takes place. The same radiation is used to tan our skin as corals and plants use for energy. If led had this same effect then led tanning beds would exist. With the high cost of bulb changes and energy with a tanning bed they would make them if it worked.
Led will also only emit one nanometer of light per diode. People can argue full spectrum all they want because they "mix". In fact, you are still only producing a specific nanometer with each diode. 440nm next to a 650nm will not mix, you still have 440nm and 650nm.
Photons of light are photons of light. LED, T5, MH, they are all the same. There is nothing fundamentally different about the light they produce, now matching spectrum and intensities is not always easy, but light is the same. The real difference, if spectrum is complete, seems to be with the point source nature of LED lights, large colones tend to self shade unless lit from multiple angles like how you can mount the maxspect mazrra system. I hope eventually LEDs can be mounted with a specialized reflector, almost like what the dentist use, where they light shines away into the reflector and then it illuminates the target not directly from the source, but from the reflector.
That wont work.. The small reflectors that can basically spotlight (concentrate) the light is what gives led its advantage.. Very little light is lost.
You start bouncing the light around and back into the led array the light is wasted. Halides waste allot of light, that is why they need to be such high wattage, The bulbs are huge and waste light..
Same thing with t-5.. The reflectors are the key, they waste very little light. Why wouldn't a vho t-12 not beat out a ho t-5?... Wasted light... The smaller bulbs make for better reflectors.
What is the radiation? Tanning beds produce UVA rays, between 320-400nm. There are not led beds right now simply because not many LED manufactures wish to invest in creating LEDs in that wavelength. There are some LEDs that are in the UV range, but the application is pretty specialized and they are still expensive to put enough in to cover a human. Nothing more to it. MH lights contain a UV blocking glass as you probably know. Actually LEDs don't produce and exact wavelength, there is still some range in there, it just isn't as much as other lights. While LEDs work similar to florescent tubes in that the inside surface is coated with a substance that emits white light. Different spectrums do blend, just add the primary colors, red, green, and blue to make white light, LEDs can do that too. If they didn't "mix" that wouldn't be possible.