boost led experiment after 1 month

Ok so after 1 month of having my LED's over my frag tank I have moved them onto my main tank, and put the halides on my frag tank. I have 2 of the boost led mu135 units, and after watching the sps in my frag tank it was a VERY noticable difference in polyp extension so onto my 120 gal DT they go will update again soon. No pics atm as it's still abit early to tell growth shots. BTW frag tank is 36x18x12 and DT is 48x24x24 both systems have a 30 gal sump/fuge, with a asm g-2 skimmer on DT and had no skimmer on the frag tank until today I put 1 of my aquac remora on it rated up to 75 gal. I believe i'll be doing away with halides for good very soon. Also afetr removing the LED's from the frag tank and putting the halides on it, the frags seem so dull looking, the LED's really make the colors pop much more appealing

 

Good info, looking to see what you think after a year or so.

 

Glad to hear this...I just ordered two of these units for my 90 gallon.

 

I just joined the club as well. Just ordered 3 for my 29g to replace the used lighting system it came with on Craigslist

 

Can not wait for pic, eager to know if LED is real better than MH light in long term..

 

As for now all i can say is i love them, and i was VERY hesitant at 1st and yes cant wait for a year or even 6 months down the road. I just got tired of reading article after article about led vs halide so decided to do a side by side comparison myself . The heat alone is rediculus I can leave my led's on for 10 hours and still touch the fixtures with only a warm radiance coming from them, try that with my halides after 10 mins you will burn your skin off, so its much cooler in my living room now.Will update with some pics as soon as i can

 

Just asking you ordered three what?

 

I have two of these on my 125 and so far they are awesome. The way I look at it is this if they last half as long as they say LEDS should last by then the replacement LEDS will be out and I still wouldn't have replaced a bulb or ballast. And yes they do make the colors freakin sweet.

 

If your DT and frag tank are linked together, it would be interesting to see the results of similar size frags by comparison in about 6 months to a year. I tried it, I was very impressed with LEDs in the beginning because the corals did 'pop' more. However, from the results of my little experiment, after about 8 months I concluded (for me) that for best all around lighting (color and growth), I still prefer T5's and if you have a larger tank, it's not easy justifying the cost of LEDs....at least not for me yet.

By the way, I tested PAR30 LED, CREE XREs and ATI T5s for 8 months with the plan of building a new LED/T5 combo lighting system where LEDs would be the primary. I tested with 3 tanks, one common sump, all the same frags.....colors were a bit brighter under the LEDs, but weren't too bad under T5's either...growth however, was almost double under T5s.

 

What do you attribute this to? Obviously if they're in the same system the water is not the difference. Can you please share some more details like distance from water to light source, depth of each frag, etc.? Were there differences in angle of light source to frag?

I hope I'm not sounding incredulous or suspicious of your results (def. not the case), just really interested in learning all I an about this topic.

--EW