Led q&a

No, I am not that guy, and I have not been pushing my fixtures at all, in fact I made only reccomendations for other LED fixtures, that I do not carry, like the radions, sols, and DIY, so I do not see how you can say that. I did say I got good results under an "eBay" light, but I did not say that was the best out there. What I am saying is that LEDs are superior in efficiency to mh and T-5, the orphek guy said that all other LED fixtures were junk. It kinda ticks me off that I would be compared to him, I am stating only facts, he pretty much outright lied. Like I said before, this was not meant to be a debate, but haters kept coming, so I gave it right back.

 

Sure, you will want around 12-18 cree XT-Es, 12 would be okay if you ran them higher. I would do 6 7500k cool whites, and 6 450nm royal blues. Add 3 reds, 3 greens, and 3-4 violets on a separate driver from the XT-Es. Rapid LEDs and ReefLEDLights both have good kits.

 

Mods, could you please go through this thread and delete all the debates, and leave only the actual Q&A parts? I would greatly appreciate it.

 

Will this be enough to help grow the corals. I am new at this so forgive me for asking stupid questions

 

There are no stupid questions! You can grow any corals you want with those LEDs

 

have any ideas for this its fish with live rock

 

what degree of lens do i need

 

No lens, they come with 120 degree lenses. you might want to put 90 degree lens on the XT-Es, as they have a wider beam angle.

 

Just to correct some of your statements, Sanjay has tested far more LED fixtures than the results that have been published show. The published results were dated back to the release of the Radion. The data was actually publised several months later. If you knew Sanjay, you would know that he has found less and less time to publish his results due to his family and professional obligations. I can assure you that he is well informed to what the major companies are releasing currently. Many of those companies send beta test units in which the data is never published. Sanjay does endorse LED tech and employs it on many of his smaller tanks. The reason he does not run them on his big tank is that he has felt that the spectrum is lacking. He admits that the PAR is there. I will say that many of the recomendations to LED that he stated to me are now being employed in ther newest fixtures so his conversion may be coming soon. You must remember for Sanjay to switch, the LED fixture mus perform well on his 3' x 3' grid. If not, Sanjay and many large tank owners will not make the switch. Surpass the performance of the 400 watt Ushio 14K in a Sunlight Supply Lumenmax in terms of intensity, spread, and spectrum, and do it at a reasonable cost, and Sanjay will switch.

I also noticed that you compared the 170 lpw LED to a 45 lpw MH. In my opinion, this is very misleading. There is no LED aquarium fixture with an overal output of 170 lpw. 170 lpw is in a lab setting with optimal conditions. Not real life. The best LED aquarium fixtures might be capable of 80 lpw but most on the market (especially the cheapy fixtures) can't even achieve 60 lpw. Even the original Orphek PR156 was touted to be 66 lpw and that was back when it sported 2:1 ration of white:blue. Since then they have drastically decreased the number of white LEDs in their fixtures.

 

You bring up a lot of good points. For a large area, mh is slightly more efficient, and the 170lumen/watt benchmark was an example of what is to come in a few years. I think they are just about neck and neck, with LEDs being a little more efficient, and just about as effective. In a couple years, LEDs will be even more efficient, so they will surpass mh, and in my opinion they are already better, especially in terms of heat output and efficiency. Is the color better? In my opinion yes, if you ask the next guy, they might not agree, it boils down to this: what do you prefer? For red acans, you are probably better off with T-5 or mh. For sps? I have great results with LEDs.