Halides vs LED

Great first post! Welcome to the site.

 

http://www.3reef.com/forums/led-aquarium-lighting/aquastyle-24-dimmable-led-kit-124128.html still growing strong never had a problem with that kit. For the money it was worth every penny. I am also running a 37w LED par38 bulb in my other nano reef that was double the price of the aquastyle diy kit, before buying the aquastyle kit i was debating on whether or not to get Odyssea halide Odyssea Metal Halide Pendant but that was to much money, way toooo HOT and to much watts for my nanocube. Plus i see burned halides on ebay all the time. Personally i have never owned one but i can say i havent had a problem with my Aquastyle LED diy kit. If assembled correctly it should last a longggg time. All my LEDs are still working and as bright as the first day they saw power. And if one does burn out i can just replace that one LED instead of the bulb or fixture.

This doesnt have any facts about aquarium studies but i found it very interesting about LEDs in general.
http://www.creeledrevolution.com/learn

 

I am not a lighting expert and have done way to much research that my head almost exploded lol.

I can only go with what I have experienced. I stared with vho t5 over a 75gal 3 10k 3 blues. every thing did ok but did get algae issues (not all lighting issues) had white lights on for 6 hrs and blues on for 8 hrs. all lps,leathers, anemone and zoa.
upgraded to a 180g (same lighting just more) also added sps. - everything seemed to stop growing (1 year) (changed bulbs @ 9 months)
switched to leds 8 months ago.
Observations.
12 hr lighting cycle
no algae issues
electric bill went down
better spread - lights every corner of the tank.
all corals did not like the change at first (10 days for most)
now all corals are thriving and major growth on sps and lps. and some leathers.
love the look and shimmer.

conclusion - LED is they way to go and so happy I didn't go with MH.

 

Coming from the electronics world I can say that you shouldn't consider how long they last because they don't burn out, or aren't supposed to even though they do very often. Life cycle should be shown with a graph which details the decline in output. Led's will decline from the day you start using them. For example I would say that by the 5 year mark you'll probably be at about 50% brightness from what you had when you first set them up, that is just an example of how they should publish the life cycle of LEDs but it probably would hurt their marketing.

 

No, that should not be correct with proper cooling anyways...

LEDs lifespan is usually measured using the L70 rating. That means that the life-span given, is the time they would be expected to retain 70% of their Lumen rating. We use PAR not lumens, but as LEDs may loose lumens, due to a shift to blue, an L70 for PAR may actually be a bit longer, but tough to say. However, if a hobby LED is rated at say 50,000 hours, that usually means the L70 is 50,000 hours, which means at 50,000 hours, with proper cooling, it will be expected to retain 70% of it's brightness as measured in lumens.

Anyways though, 50,000 hours, if used 12h per day, would be about 11 years, so, at 11 years, properly cooled, you would only expect a 30% decrease in lumens (and PAR? - not sure, but as LEDs output all of their light within the "PAR" range, and if there is a shift, seem to more likely shift to blue, rather than yellow, it should not be lower. So, I'd expect at least 11 years as far as PAR goes - ballasts and other components would be expected to fail long before the LED)

 

That was an example of how they should publish the life span. Not simply saying how long they last.

 

Right, but I am saying that they "don't" publish how long they should last, they publish how long they should retain 70% of their lumen output. Certainly a graph would be better, but there are a lot of factors to change the graph, heat being the big one. Improperly cooled LEDs could loose intensity exponentially faster than published estimates.

 

Also, by the way, I believe CREE does have lots of graphs available. I am not sure about other manufactures. Aquarium lighting manufactures are likely just going by CREEs data, or whatever LED OEMs data they are using.

 

Thanks