Led and sps

[guppychao]

Who are using LEDs for there sps dominated tank? What are your likes and dislikes? How are the colors to the sps. Full tank shoots pictures would be great! And mention what type of LEDs too. Let's see them!

[Tracy G]

I have a mixed reef but I do have a good amount of SPS. Colors are amazing and growth is good.

 

 

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[Tinpanva]

Same here, SPS dominant and using AI Vega LEDs

 

Gluing animals to rocks since 2012

[YHSublime]

All my old stuff was grown under LED's. In the words of Rob, "It's light, it grows stuff." 

[Der ABT]

Just not as fast...thick or filly cores (shaded areas don't do as well as with metal halide)... but agree you can get the same colors more or less

[guppychao]

No pics?

[YHSublime]

http://www.wamas.org/forums/index.php?/topic/55360-Two-tanks%2C-One-room/page__view__findpost__p__604815

[wangspeed]

I switched from Reef Breeders to T5/royal blue LED. Much happier now and my SPS responded very positively. No more annoying disco, and the tank is much more evenly lit.

 

 

--

Warren

[Neto]

I have built two fixtures with high quality leds and I get good color but almost no growth except birdsnests.. I upgrated now to an ATI powermodule so hopefully some things can grow now.

[Tinpanva]

Sorry, didn't see that you wanted pictures. here goes.

 

I'm using this:

 

 

to grow some of these

 

 

inside of this 29 gal biocube.

 

 

Sorry, slightly off color. Planning a new photo spread this week.

[Jason Rhoads]

Very pretty tank!

 

I run LEDs, and see good growth.  However, as DER ABT stated above, you do see more shading with LED vs MH.  I feel like this is outweighed by the mitigated heat production, but have considered going with an LED/MH combo just to get rid of some of the shadows.   

[pizzaguy]

Very nice bio cube. I am leaving the led rage. Going with t5 or halides on my new build. I personally don't feel I get the same colors out of my coral as say the tank my coral came from running halides.

[08can-am]

Very nice bio cube. I am leaving the led rage. Going with t5 or halides on my new build. I personally don't feel I get the same colors out of my coral as say the tank my coral came from running halides.

I also just ditched "cheaper leds" for t5s. Im hoping to see more growth and love not dealing with the spot light effect leds give. Plus the color difference so far is a huge improvement with t5s

[pizzaguy]

I'm using g2 radions so not cheap but I can't really blame it on the lights as I've had nitrate issues for years so it's probably a combo of things for myself.

[Ryan S]

The best sps tanks don't use leds. Simple as that.

[YHSublime]

Just not as fast...thick or filly cores (shaded areas don't do as well as with metal halide)... but agree you can get the same colors more or less

Evan nailed it.

 

I always tell people to look at Tony (ridetgeducatti) tank. He's gone back to metal halides after a long bout of evergrow LEDs, but I believe that is BC he has invested a lot of money in some very high end SPS. He grew and successfully maintained a phenomenal SPS tank under LEDs. Even TinPan above has shown a great mixed reef under LEDs, and they do exist!

 

When it comes to the lighting debate, I would only listen to the voice of experience. Experience to me would be running each light for more than a year. I've run metal halide, led, and t5, but I won't tell you what works best, because I think that's a loaded question, with many variables, and my 3 or 4 months with each is not enough time to provide anything conclusive.

[Ryan S]

I've never seen someone who ran successfully t5 or mh over a sps tank, then leds, who said, the leds > either the t5 or mh. Even the 1200g radion v mh experiment ended (silently) w mh over the whole tank.

 

I think, personally, for sps, the best lighting looks like this: leds<t5<mh.

[johnnybv]

Most of our customers and friends that have SPS went LED and  regretted it.  Here is store, all my SPS are under Halide, Growth and color is far superior under halides.  Now, all my LPS and softies look and grow great under LED, but you will not find ANY SPS in my store under LED, I tried many brands and never had good outcomes.  Just My .02 worth of experience.

john

[gmerek2]

I have never ran metal halides but I would like some input on something I have noticed about the way people run LEDs. People typically buy one fixture and hang it directly over the tank and that's it. In my opinion two or three thin fixtures should be hung: one at the very front and one at the very back of the tank to get light from all angles. MH have big reflectors and LEDs don't. I think a lot of our shading comes with the way the LED units are compact. The reef brights ERC is doing a group buy on are thin and long allowing for multiple units to be installed for better angles.

[gmerek2]

This is my tank ideally I would like to run 3 reef brights for more angles but I only run one for now. I can't be live how the shading went away after taking the sps colony's out of my 40b with one d120 and putting it in here with more led light angles

 

 

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[Ryan S]

How big is your tank? Three 72" reefbrites would run $1050. You could afford 3 mh fixtures, ballasts, and bulbs for ten years for that price. And have better colors and substantially better growth rates... might be worth trying out...

[miggs76]

I think my radion pro is giving me some really pretty colors.  My tank is 95% SPS.

[miggs76]

Here is a nice little Miyagi Tort that broke off my main colony.  Under Radion Pro.

[gmerek2]

How big is your tank? Three 72" reefbrites would run $1050. You could afford 3 mh fixtures, ballasts, and bulbs for ten years for that price. And have better colors and substantially better growth rates... might be worth trying out...

I hope you can convince me but I had a couple issues when I considered them. I think it's a matter of pay me now or pay me later. I didn't want 1200 watts of electricity bill for fish tank lighting for ten years straight. Also in the summer we don't use a lot of air conditioning so there is no way we could run MH here without buying a chiller because of the extra heat the MH would put off.

[Ryan S]

Those are all legitimate factors for sure! You could try 1 250w mh over 2' of tank perhaps? See how tank temp and electric bill change over 6 months or something.