corals and LED light.

i will admit led's if given time may eventually may equal output of halides, they just arent there yet and i dont trust them.

 

Is this "fact" or your opinion? You've been stating it like it is common knowledge fact. I'd have to disagree, as I have seen growth of SPS from LEDs.

 

yes it is FACT i have seen dozens of people thinking led was better switch their huge reef tanks to led from 400 watt halide, and i have seen their prized acros die. this happened to me over my 40 gallon tank. the led's are now over my sump being worthless for 800 bucks

 

Was there any type of light acclimation for these people changing their lights? How long ago was this? What type of lights? Spectrographs, PAR/PUR readings...any other changes around the same time? Lots of factors contribute. Jumping in "blindly" is not the fault of the LEDs if this was the case.

 

this was several months ago with the panorama fixture off of petsolutions.com i replaced my 400 watt metal halide t5 combo fixture with two of these and two of my acro colonies perished within the nest several weeks. i acclimated the lights as i only turned on several rows at a time and slowly got it brighter. also the petstore i work at did the same thing with their display tanks. thanks to me i was thinking they would work way better. but found out the hard way. they lost most of their coral as it was an sps tank with a ritteri anemone that also perished.

 

I've seen these fixtures in person as a LFS here has it over a small cube tank. I don't believe these to be designed for deep tanks, as to the naked eye(at least mine) they look like stunner strips in a fixture. Stunners are just to be used as a shimmer effect, and small supplemental lighting. I think that was the problem. With the CREEs, at 24" to my sand bed, and 3" off of the water, I can burn anything down there. I have 40 and 60 degree optics, and have them dimmed to not hurt anything. I think, considering you saw all of this with a particular fixture, you had a bad experience with LEDs. They are not all like that. Very good fixtures can be purchased at a comparable price to MH and T5HO fixtures. BoostLED has a fixture right now that is a great buy (MU135W) for deeper tanks. At $300, it is a cost effective way to make the switch. RapidLED offers CREE DIY LEDs as an option and offer dimming capabilities for lowering light, and color adjustments (Look at Evolved's thread on MH to LED conversion).

 

I'm not that familiar with the panoramas, but know they are not super high par leds. I don't even think they are marketed as such. They are certainly no where near 400W MHs. However, there are leds that can blow away 400W MHs away for par. They are very expensive though or you need to build them yourself. The Par reading people are getting for some of the high end fixtures are enough to melt some corals .

You can get plenty of light from an led and then some. They key is the deeper you go, the more focused the light needs to be, and the more leds you need to cover a given area. If you have lots of leds, with very focused optics, you get lots of par. And lots of par = lots of coral growth...

 

I can't speak for larger tanks, but my nano has been doing very well with the Par38 fixture I have over it. Good growth, no temperature swings, and best of all, no need to switch out bulbs. The PAR values match what can be had from a 75 watt metal halide and for less money than the cost of a MH fixture and five years worth of bulbs. I just wanted to throw in my thoughts as someone who has a tank running on LEDs.

 

who would pay 800 dollars for a shimmer effect? how could a 300dollar led fixture be more powerful than an 800 dollar? it doesnt make sense.

 

Foolishness. Where do you see these prices? $800?

Also, a higher price does not necessarily make a better product.