Switching to MH from LED--advice

I see no sponsorship. They are to claiming that their product is better than other LED fixtures. They are comparing their results with proven lighting to a specific brand of LED lighting and recording their results. RW is not trying to sell you on a product. They are reporting what they were able to achieve and providing you with the details to achieve it yourself. The original report was for RW customers and was not reported to Ecotech. Ecotech using it after the fact could definitely be seen as a conflict. However, the initial time and effort was a collaboration and for me did not impact my decision to purchase any product. It does, however make me want to try and achieve these same results with my own setup.

bur01014 wrote: Don't get me wrong.  Leds work just fine, but it is quite the stretch to say they currently are capable of outperforming T5 or MH in terms of color and growth.  If so, I would have kept my Radions.  I would say they are capable of outperforming T5 and MH in terms of heat and efficiency. I would love to be proved wrong so I could save on bulb replacements and heat.  Research sponsored by an LED manufacturer doesn't help me too much.  I am anxiously waiting to finally see LEDs do to corals what I know corals can achieve in an enclosed box of glass.  Once that happens, I will try them out again, but for now - royal blue leds will continue to serve as my actinic pop, but not as stand alone lighting. Even Vivid Aquariums who posted the famous youtube video comparing Metal Halide vs. Radions on their show tank have since gone back to full metal halide on both sides.  Sanjay Joshi, the unbiasied reef lighting expert in the hobby for the last 20 years, currently runs 8-10 radion units over his tank but states clearly the growth and color is not as good as it was under Metal Halide (see his facebook page).  So I think we need to be careful in recommending to fellow hobbyists light sources as being better than others, when in fact that is not true.  From a bigger picture, Leds will serve most casual hobbyists just fine.  I just didn't like how they paled my coral colors out, which often requires dosing nitrates to counter.  In terms of SPS, Deep purples became light tan, blues turned sky blue, etc.  Leds require lots of fiddling and dialing them in.  The shadowing they produce can also be difficult to deal with, which often requires most SPS junkies to utilize T5s as supplements.

Well I didn't make the statement Reef Wholesalers did. The comparison between LEDs and other forms of lighting is very hard to make in the first place because MH and T5 and not adjustable spectrum lighting methods. They are on off and whatever color you choose to put in them. LED's have an almost infinite combination of colors and spectrums that they can put out. This alone means that for every one success there could be a million or more failures with the same light just due to the adjustability. It took over a year for RW to come up with their combination that they claim works and that was created by running other proven lighting types side by side until they got the same results and then due to the adjustability, were able to push them even further. This also doesn't account for the fact that RW is not trying to adjust the lighting to what is pleasing for us to view the tank and corals. They were adjusting for growth and coloration. In our home tanks that is not generally the case.

The SPS junkies utilizing T5 supplements may just not have taken the time to figure out how to adjust their setup for their system and turned to a plug and play mechanism to try and remedy that. Maybe the fact the RW hangs their lights 24" above the tank make a difference?

I'm by no means saying that T5 and MH won't give you great looking systems and they have been researched to death so that finding the combination that become plug and play is quite easy. I think the same will happen with LED's once they have been around as long as T5's and MH. If it didn't work for you then I'm glad you found something that did.

Part of the draw to this hobby for me is the challenge and believe me there is plenty of challenge in getting the right LED's to give you the desired result on your tank. Challenge accepted.

Krazie4Acans wrote: I see no sponsorship. They are to claiming that their product is better than other LED fixtures. They are comparing their results with proven lighting to a specific brand of LED lighting and recording their results. RW is not trying to sell you on a product. They are reporting what they were able to achieve and providing you with the details to achieve it yourself. The original report was for RW customers and was not reported to Ecotech. Ecotech using it after the fact could definitely be seen as a conflict. However, the initial time and effort was a collaboration and for me did not impact my decision to purchase any product. It does, however make me want to try and achieve these same results with my own setup.

Ecotech Marine recently started their "Ecotech Marine Lab" which is the new division that overseas all of their research.  The publication you highlighted was Ecotech Marine's Lab first publication.  They "partnered with Canadian distributor Reef Wholesale in this investigation."  According to Reefbuilders.  They are also partnering with other coral propagation groups.  This was not an independent study done by RW and later fed to Ecotech out of consideration...

The original study was in support of Ecotech Marine Lab, not RW customers.  I would be okay with it if RW conducted the study by themselves and was not provided the radions for free.  I am just a little paranoid with this stuff as I work in pharmaceutical research and have experience with many different entities pushing their new drugs, skewing the results.  Doesn't really matter anyways, way off topic from the original poster's needs.   

Oh boy, another LED battle. Eyes glazing over...

kevin.st wrote: That reefbright halide hybrid looks awesome!!  Someday when I have some cash, I might look into that.

kevin.st wrote: I ended up getting a 250-400 watt selectable ballast and fixture. I think I will be getting a new radium bulb for it and I will install it this week. If anybody cares, I will update this post with results. I am excited to see if there's any difference.

So, I ended up using a dual 250 watt halide setup over my tank.  I used it for about 3 weeks at 4 hours per day.  After about 3 weeks of using this light, I started noticing some corals were not doing well. 

My mille colony, about 5 inches in diameter starting losing color and actually turned white.  But not at the tips.  It was turning white from one side of the coral and over the course of 3 days, turned completely white.  I also had a couple of torts and chalices that have started turning white as well.

Once I started noticing these things, I took the halide off and put my ai vega back on the tank.

At this time, my ca was at 420, alk was at 7 at mag around 1250.  Nitrates and phosphates are very low.  But, I am wondering if my test kits were not reading correctly.  I have since bought a new Red sea pro test kit and levels seem to be OK.  I am dosing kalk through the ATO and 2 part as necessary.  I have about 25 frags, mostly small stuff. 40 gallon system.

I don't know, I tried to keep the lighting to a low photo period and had the light about 14 inches over the water.  I am not sure if I burned them or if I had that rapid tissue loss.  I'm honestly contemplating ditching SPS at this point.

well, darn it.  Why is everything else still alive, then?  I have a 30 head Duncan, 7-8" monti, huge GBTA and those are all happy as ever! 

This is why I think I am done with SPS.

Ok.  I really appreciate the help.  I will keep the MH setup for another setup in the future. 

Back to LED's for while, since I already have a couple.

I actually was doing that quite often as this also held the temp a little more stable  Didn't matter.  Still had baked coral!