New bulbs or switch to LED's

Its that time of year for me to change my T5 bulbs and I am wondering if its time for me to take the plunge and switch to LED's. New bulbs run about $125 and for literally a few hundred more I can get some DIY LED's.

I have been researching for months and may settle on the Rapid LED kit.

Any thoughts ?

 

If you have the money I would go with a rapid led kit. The cree led's that they use are superior and their kits are some of the cheapest diy around. The only thing is if you want them to be controllable you will have to mod some type of controller into it or do a diy controller. I would also get the dimmable kit so you don't have to run them at full power. I don't have a kit from rapid led but I almost pulled the trigger last year on one and did a lot of research on them. The led's will save you money in the long run but if you really don't need to upgrade you could always put the money into something you don't have for your tank

 

Honestly, it will completely be up to you. Sounds like you did your research. Rapid is good. Also look at group buy led.com.

 

What size tank, and for what corals? I did a Rapid retrofit on my JBJ 28 and love it! But obviously this is a smaller tank.

 

90g, moving primarily to SPS

 

About a year ago, I had the exact same question. I had T5's on my tank. I had a ton of SPS that were doing very well. The problem was that I had to keep the SPS at the very top of the tank because the T5s didn't penetrate the water deep enough. I was also sick of replacing the bulbs. I decided to make the switch to LEDs (rapidLED)..

Okay, yes LEDs look nice, they are cheaper in the long run, they are much more powerful, etc.....

However, my coral really suffered at the beginning. I lost over half of my SPS. I took all the precautions. Started at low intensity, etc. However, about a year later, the SPS that was fortunate enough to adapt and survive is doing well. They aren't as colorful as they were with the T5s, but they seem to be growing faster..

If you make the switch, just know that your coral probably won't be happy for a while. Be prepared for some losses. Be sure to get a dimmable system and start very very low so you will reduce the risk of burning/shocking your coral...

 

I had the same question come up myself last week. Replace metal halide and actinic bulbs on my coralife fixture or replace fixture with led. I opted for led and purchased a reef breeders photon24 with 90 degree optics and couldn't be happier.... Took about 9 days from order to delivery..... I modified the custom setting to scale back the intensity as to not fry my corals....I currently have blue and white channels set to 40% and will ramp up to either 100 or until the point where my corals begin to react negatively over the next month or two . Tank is 36x18x21 and light spread is awesome...also I was dealing with heat issues and that was another deciding factor... Light has been up and running for 4 days now so we will see.

 

Led's if you have the money, you'll save money in the long run

 

Ugh...............thanks for all the input, lot's of opinions out there, still can't decide. Don't really want to spend the money but yet I could definitely swing it. Still not totally convinced LED's are it, and definitely don't want to sacrifice any of my SPS.

 

I only had a few SPS when I switched (1 Acro & 3 Montis), but none of mine had any issues with the change to LEDs. I started at 50% power, but I use my controller to slowly increase from 15-50% over the course of two hours, and same on the way down. So total of only 6 hours with all lights on 50%.