Verdict on LED's

Is the verdict out on the LED lighting?

Do they offer the same or better beneficial growth to corals?

I am considering changing over from my MH setup to LED's....just tossing the idea around now in my head. But I need to know if they are the "real deal".

Any experience long and short term?

Thanks!

 

Don't know of any long term with the current generation of lights.

 

I have also been thinking of switching over to LED now that my MH has been giving my problems. The main concerns I have heard about LED technology compared to MH is that MH provides UV radiation. Currently, (at least from what ive read...mostly from Evil himself) LEDs lack certain spectrum and do not provide UV radiation to the coral. This means that some coral will lose color or dull out. I have heard that the most usual coral to discolor are Zoos and that sps do the best of all corals under LED.

Another thing to think about is that there are widely different views/experiences on LED technology. If you spend any time on the Nano-reef lighting forums, there are a multitude of posts going both ways on coloration of their corals before and after LED. Some people claim they have far superior colors under LEDs while some claim they have lost coral or that many have browned out/dulled under LED.

Unfortunately for me, I have a hard time looking past negative reviews due to my luck . I would really like to try LED's...especially Evil's Par 38 spotlight because I have a small tank but am very hesitant to try out this new technology. MH has a long and proven track record so its hard to chose against MH imo.

 

I hear ya!
It's really hard to make the switch without real proof positive results.

I love the fact that they burn so cool and throw almost no heat off, the bulbs last pretty much forever and it costs much less to run them.

But with all that said, I still need the real proof to make me switch. The last thing I want is to go to something that is not going to give me the color or growth that I get with MH lighting. It has to be equal or better for me to switch in my eyes even with the aforementioned benefits.

 

Ya this is pretty much my position. The fact that I already have a MH ballast makes it hard to justify switching to LED even though there are some definite benefits (low to no heat and long life).

To be fair, alot of the negative reviews I hear as far as growth is concerned is most likely due to poor husbandry or acclimation to LED lighting. I believe that LED will grow coral as fast if not faster than some MH set ups. The major lacking factor is coloration in my opinion. UV radiation is very important to coloration because it is very harsh and causes corals to add alot of pigment to negate it (as im sure you know).

It would make my life so much easier right now just to pick up a LED fixture and call it a day. My tank has just finished cycling so I wouldn't need to re-acclimate anything, but even if my MH ballast is done for I'm planning on buying another MH ballast instead of going LED.

There are too many unknowns and too many things to be worked out still. I think that in a couple years that LED technology will be equal to MH (maybe superior) but until that happens I am leery of jumping in with both feet...especially considering the amount of money you spend on coral in your tank.

 

Here's the deal... With halides you are getting UV radiation which gives you the specific chromoproteins that are desired with sps. I am building a led fixture to supplement my halide in a few weeks. I will include a lot of blue and also a small amount of violet and ultraviolet wavelengths just for amazing looks.
I have no desire to tell you what you want out of your tank, however I do participate in signifigant research on halide lighting's spectal output... To transition to led lighting, you are going to want to include a bit of uv (405nm) and ultraviolet (420nm) led's into your fixture.

If you go with Cree or another high output led (lumenex) you will get plenty of par (considering how led light is more laminar that halide)

 

Where are you finding UV LEDs? I have read that most UV leds are not aquarium friendly and they start at 50 dollars per bulb and increase steadily from there. I would also imagine it would be hard to measure the same/reproduce the same amount of UV light a MH fixture puts out.

I was looking into the possibility of building a DIY LED fixture with UV leds included but it seems like there was too many unknowns that someone smarter than me (you? lol ;D) would need to figure out first so that I could just copy them.

 

haha ok......

So after saying I wouldnt switch from MH to LED I did a whole lot of reading about it and am having serious second thoughts. Theres alot of information and people who have been running LED on their tanks for a year+ who have been having great results. I still need to do a lot more research but I think I might be going into the realm of LEDs pretty soon.

This will be alot less risky for me to do since I have a 5.5 g tank that just finished cycling anyway. If I had a mature tank...especially one that is big and fully stocked I would be more cautious, but from what Ive been reading alot of people are using straight LED on 100 + gallon tanks. Theres this person Beeker on RC who is using all Par 38 spotlights on a big tank (not sure 100 plus though) and has all the Par readings for different depths. Pretty interesting.

 

sorry i missed this the first time. I have no trouble finding the lower (405nm) wavelengths... however the higher (420nm) are harder to come by.
3W Ultra Bright UV Violet LED
3W Watt UV Ultra Voilet High Power STAR LED Light Lamp - eBay (item 320523352281 end time May-03-10 10:13:23 PDT)

If you have some more questions i can help you out with them...

 

I just built a tank with a PAR 38 light over it. The corals I have in there were pulled from my other nano because they were not getting enough light. They include star polyps, blue polyps and some green buttons. I also threw in a couple of orange ricordea which were doing fine in the other tank so I could see how their color reacts to the different lighting. The tank is only a few weeks old, but I am keeping pictures of everything. Hopefully the outcome will be a positive one. So far, everything I have added to the tank is opening up significantly more than before (except the ricordea which seems indifferent to the change).