Going back to halide after 4+ years with LED

[vanpire]

I have yet to read all of the thread, but heres my thoughts.

My wife and I had tanks in the 90's, starting with VHO's (remember those, lol) and added halides later.
We moved onto other hobbys, like a boat, seadoo and building our 427 Shelby Cobra.

We recently just got back into the beautiful reef hobby. We bought a Chinese type LED for a 29g., don't care for it.
55g tempory tank (ya, right) with Maxspect Razors, it's ok, and a couple of Kessil 160we, again ok.

We're in the process of building a fish room with a 125g in wall mixed reef in the living room wall.

So, I bought four Kessil 360we's to hang over the 125g. I desided to try one over my wifes 29g, and we don't really care for it. It doesen't seem to have the proper amount of blue, it looks "washed out". I don't like the idea that a lot of people do, buy adding a stunner strip of blue LED's (or the like) to get what the corals and us want, for these tanks anyway. We'll see.

So, we are waiting on our T5 system that also has 6 pucks of LED's.

We're going to try the T5 hybrid, but if we end up not liking the color & coral growth, we'll go back to halides with adding T5 or LED for the actinic.

I just don't feel the LED's are quite here,.....yet. We hate the "disco affect" with most, but not all, systems.
The best, are the Kessil's. If we use them on the 125g, I'll have to add blue stunners.

We will NOT,...spend the outragious price, for the popular Radions.

I don't beleive anything grows corals as well as halides, and as healthy too.

Our biggest concern with having three to four 250w halides is the heat, and we don't want to use a chiller.

Anyway, I'm with you, we may end up going back to halides.

I have a ~300 gallon 96" long x 30" wide x 24" in tall. I used 3 x 250 W with lumen bright reflectors and coverage is very good. I keep my tank temp at 79-80 in the summer and 77-78 degrees in the winter.

I live in AZ. My house is kept at 73 degrees in the winter and 78 degrees in the summer. I need heaters for about 4 months and a fan the other 8 months. No need for a chiller. The fan works really well.

I bought a chiller for a previous and smaller tank because I thought I needed one. I have never hooked it up and it is collecting dust.

 

[Greybeard]

Do you have a fan system in the canopy that might be kicking on now that wasn't before?

Good call... more air movement is more likely to affect pH than increased light. Even if there isn't a fan, simple convection is going to increase air flow around a tank with the heat of halide bulbs. Algae growth rates will affect it as well. Could also be evaporation rate. If you're dosing Kalk through an ATO system, that would certainly account for a higher pH.

I get more film algae on the glass with the halide than I did with the LED I was using. I think it's mainly because the halide isn't as focused.

 

[mcarroll]

I think it's mainly because the halide isn't as focused.

+10

My DIY system has 30º lenses – I scrape the glass in that tank about twice a year.

 

[cilyjr]

No kalk in top off. Kalk is dosing controlled.

 

[cilyjr]

Took this looks like these guys are happy under halide

 

[cilyjr]

The biggest downside on finding from the switch is every particle in the water seems to show. I think if I ever want a crystal-clear tank I will need to get rid of my sand sifting gobies probably I'll just live with the particulates

 

[cilyjr]

Did a power outage test and the lights didn't come back on thought it was hysteresis from the apex program. But to test that I plugged something else in the recepticle. It worked.

Do lumatek and sls galaxy ballasts have a built in feature that keeps them from firing until the bulb is cooled for protection?

 

[rockworm]

Did a power outage test and the lights didn't come back on thought it was hysteresis from the apex program. But to test that I plugged something else in the recepticle. It worked.

Do lumatek and sls galaxy ballasts have a built in feature that keeps them from firing until the bulb is cooled for protection?

The Lumatek ballasts have a 5 minute delay before they will fire up again. (I have 2 of them). I am not sure about the galaxy, but suspect they are the same.

 

[Breadman03]

I believe the Hamilton electronic ballasts also have that feature.

 

[cilyjr]

Ok thanks

 

[Greybeard]

I believe the Hamilton electronic ballasts also have that feature.

I know my Hamilton electronic ballast does. Not sure if it's 5 min, but there is certainly an extended delay after power loss before it'll fire again. Seems longer than 5 min to me.

 

[tammieh]

Ok guys, can anyone chime in here? I'm in the middle of a 320g peninsula build. I'm old school and had planned on going MH +/- T5. My last big tank was early 2000s so I don't have any real experience with LED lighting. I dabbled in it on a smaller tank and was disappointed. When I went to my local LFS we were discussing how to handle the heat from the MH (thinking of using a bathroom exhaust fan so that the fan itself is in the attic where we can't hear it) and he suggested Radion LED lighting. Now my husband is questioning my decision to go MH especially since none of the local lfs use MH on their tanks. Has anyone here used Radion LED and went back to MH?

 

[mcarroll]

People do Radions and other similar lights all the time and then turn around and switch or add on to make them something else.

For what it's worth, you can certainly spend as much as you'd like to on LED's, but you don't need to spend like that to get a good system.

Before setting your mind on a particular brand, I would suggest considering what you did or did not like about the light your old lights put out.

Also, have you seen an all-T5 tank vs a MH-only tank?

More or less, MH lights are spot lights and florescent lights are "flood" or area lights. As you would expect they produce different results. MH is probably more reminiscent of shallow water light. Florescent is probably more reminiscent of deep water light, which beyond a certain depth is actually directionless.

If you're not that particular and all that seems like over-analyzing, then you'll probably be fine with whatever lights you get.

Otherwise, select LED strips to emulate florescent lighting and select spotlights to emulate MH lighting. There's no real reason to select both as all of them run about the same color-schemes. It's not like back in the day where you have a whitish MH where you need actinic florescent lights on the sides.

Current USA, Hamilton Technology and GHL and others make fine LED strips. GHL, Kessil, AI, Ecotech and others make fine spotlights.

 

[tammieh]

Well, my first and only led fixture didn't keep my bubble tip happy and that's really what's important to me. I switched to CF and it's thriving like crazy! So, that is what is making me hesitant to buy another LED fixture. They are so expensive that I want to try to get the correct and best one first.

So, yes, I'll over analyze it ... a lot! ;-) So far in my small tanks since I've only had "easy" corals with CF lights, but want to be able to step it up a notch given the size of my future aquarium. I do have some time before I can pull the trigger anyways.

I saw for the first time yesterday (after posting above) a Kessil spotlight with strip leds. We both liked the shallow water light look. Reminds me of scuba diving in the shallower water. And that may also be why I liked the MH lights so much and if I do go LED I'll probably do a combo with the spot lights and led strips.

 

[cilyjr]

I'm happier each day with my return to mh. There is most definitely the beginnings of things changing colors. Most noticeably in the zoanthids. Followed by a forest fire digi. This is all anecdotal of course!

Also I feel the front to back foreshortning effect v is less significant. I've heard of people saying that led gives more of a 2d effect but never really paid it any mind. Now however I'm thinking there is something to it.

 

[cilyjr]

@tammieh I don't think it would make a difference if one were using radion, or ai, or even Kessel for that matter. The lights being produced now are most likely much better then what I was using though I've heard the sol light still has a higher par to watt ratio then some newer lights.

My personal experience (and I heard sanjayou joshi mention this in a reef threads podcast) is people simply aren't using enough puck style led on their tanks (@mcarroll even with the 80° lenses of the newer lights) If I were to go led over again I'd buy at least 6 for my 6x2x2 foot tank. What I would see in some larger colonies (before I killed everything in a non-led related disaster) would be small stn events occurring in areas that became heavily shaded over time from growth. Now again all anecdotal. I decided to supplement with t5 and felt it was an improvement but in the end decided it wasn't enough. So I made this switch back

 

[mcarroll]

Shading out might be able to do it alone, but increasing nutrient levels over time might have been a compounding factor....in the coral can lose control of their situation with the zooxanthellae, which leads to bad bad things....potentially STN-like things for sure. (check out the coral tag on my blog linked in my sig for some linked articles that explain this)

 

[cilyjr]

Can't say I've seen an incident where I had a nutrient level increase of significance. Not to say it could not have happened. I think I've had a couple stn events due to sudden drops in alk due to my ca reactor malfunction. Here's what I have hypothesized.

Coral A. Is already struggling due to overgrowth and shading it's self out. Then an alk drop happens (I'm talking big 3dkh or so). Now the coral has to make some real effort to survive. It seems to make since that it would abandon areas of the colony that aren't making any significant contribution to the survival of the colony. I guess I'm saying I think it would do ok with one incident or the other but 2 issues at one time pushed over the edge.

 

[cilyjr]

Here's a full fts shot after 2 weeks with halide

 

[cilyjr]

Fish are hanging around the auto feeder its close to time for a food dump