LEDs... Bad?

I was wondering, what are the drawbacks to LEDs? I heard they won't grow coral very well. And that they lack in the u.v. light spectrum. and if they do, can't I just add some u.v. LEDs to my DIY fixture?

 

lol where did you hear that from?

The new Led Fixtures are outstanding, some can produce 20000k+ and with a very small power bill to boot. thats why so many are going LED now a days. check around on here at some DIY/led upgrades, and you'll see

 

This is what Im trying to prove wrong.
Check out my build thread

 

I have my light fixture bulit and wired, but not wired to the drivers. I was just wondering if I should buy some more LEDs from rapid LED, the u.v. ones.

 

The ONLY thing i dont like about my LEDs is the spotlight effect, which can be avoided by buying a fixture other then a Par bulb.

 

thats the best thing about them! that way you can create many different light levels throughout the tank to support a large variety of corals. it also causes the ripple effect in the water we all love.

 

If your looking at growing sps, then yes Consider Violet important.
please note any spectrum under 400nm is considered to produce a harmful type of UV light, so to aim for above 400nm. So far i have noticed a big improvement on color and polyp extension after adding the violet color to my build. Now adays more and more fixtures are coming with violet diodes added to them so it is appearing to be needed in a fixture for sps corals.

 

If you rotate my coral 90* it looks as if its dying do to all the shaded areas caused from spot lighting effect of the bulb.

 

what is your lighting? it must be alot worse than most because most led's have a spotlight effect but that is just meaning they have the most light right beneath them and it gradually lessens the farther you go from the lens to the side. it would have to be an entire cut off from the light to do that to a coral i would think.

 

My sps filled tank disagrees with the idea that Led could be "bad"