Trying an led light instead of metal halide

flowflezy · Jul 14, 2013

Always ran 250 metal halide over my reef tank switched a few days ago to a led lighting. Has a 10k mode and 20k also 460 blue. With dimmers. So far it's been going good and can run a nomal 8 hour photo period with halide only 51/2 hours plus had to add chiller. Now no chiller and water is fine hope corals enjoy..

DSP · Jul 15, 2013

Awesome good to hear things are going well.what kind led did you choose?

Rob&Gab · Jul 15, 2013

make sure to acclimate them slowly to change or you can bleach all your coral. LED's are very good but they are like laser beams. Real Talk.

flowflezy · Jul 15, 2013

Went with a brand new reef torch not creed leds. Bill makes the lights. I started at half percent of each and still only run 20k for 6 hours the blue I run 8. All corals seem to love it. Softies are bigger, monty about to take off whiter edge ill post a few pictures today with the light and b4 with the halide

bhazard451 · Jul 15, 2013

This is a neat implementation of the chinese multichips found on ebay.

Compared to your MH setup, the issue I could see you running into, is that these chips don't have any significant spectrum in the 400-450nm region. There are no violet 400-420 actinics in these multichips, and the 20k chips themselves have a strange spectrum plot that leans towards red. Everyone and their mother has started using violets in their fixtures, so this fixture is a bit behind the times.

They should grow coral fine, but if you see colors starting to change or fade within 6 months, replace them with a fixture that has chips covering the nm wavelengths listed above.

It is very easy to make these dimmable, so if it isn't, that is another issue. One of the best features of leds is their ability to dim and provide a sunrise/sunset effect throughout the day.