LED experience for under $2
 

There as been some hot discussion lately about LED lighting as opposed to the dated MH technology and it ocurred to me that many reefers may not have seen their coral under LED lighting so.... Go to the 7-11 and buy one of those lighters that have a BLUE LED light on the bottom of the lighter that you can turn on and off.
Turn all the lights off in the tank, the room and the ajacent areas and close the blinds to stop outside ambient lighting hitting the tank. Than shine the blue LED light on your coral.
The fluorescence you see is almost shocking. Picture in your minds eye your whole tank lit with LED.

To get a real representation of the coral color, I take frags outside. If I wanted to artificially color them, I could tint the glass blue and purple :)

Seriously, MH has another 10 years on my tank before it's outdated. I have yet to see a tank with LED that I like, and I sure wouldn't spend money on doing that to my tank. No, I haven't seen a lot of tanks lit by LED, but of those I've seen, I haven't liked any yet.

Actually it is not artificial colour. Many SPS and LPS have enzymes in their mass. When hit with lighting like the blue light from LED or to a lesser degree the blue light from actinic light, the enzymes react causing the coral to fluoresce; a natural response not an artificial one.

In other words humans looking a brown sps frag see brown under MH. That same sps frag will look stunningly green or pink or purple depending on the natural enzymes in the coral of the coral. I think that is what the fish and inverts see.

So Aquattro what would you rather see? Brown or bright red, green, yellow or pink

ill say this i got to see a friends tank the other day with his diy led fixture and it was dimmable and very nice indeed infact alot nicer then the vertex alummina(?) that ive also seen in person on a few tanks:)


i do like my halides but they run hot and are expensive to maintain so im thinking diy led fixture in my canopy either way both are effective and both are expensive lol:)

I'd rather see a realistic color, as I might find the same coral in the wild. Wild corals don't have enzymes activated by LEDs on a reef :)
If this is your thing, that's great, it's just not what I want on my tank. Maybe as the technology matures, and the effects I don't like are addressed (and the Porsche price tag drops), I might look at them. Years from now. Maybe.

Maybe you could start dealing in black market marine goods to pay for that porsche?:lol:
I'm still on the fence with LED's right now but I'm hoping as they become more popular they will drive the prices of top end T5 and MH fixtures down as well as bulb prices.

I was gonna say that I could put a string of X-mas lights on my tank and make the color look good:wink:

you may be onto something there doug possibly a new breakthrough in the lighting realm;) i still like the idea of tinting the glass blue hehe:) maybe even one of those urinal thingys that make your water blue in your toilet lol that could possibly work too eh??:):):)

Brad, are you free tomorrow (tuesday) night or the night after? Come over and take a gander at the new tank. i think i might be able to sway you on the Led.

I think the main thing causes your bias to MH is based on the fact that many people who add led tend to sway away from the 10-14k spectrum. So you get the over saturated florescence which can look cool for party tricks but in my mind is a little bit much

Jon, I might be, but it's not the color, it's the flicker of blue vs white shadow. If the light was only 1 color, that might remove that issue.
And, I'd really need to see a full blown SPS tank after 3 years to ensure a constant output. Time will tell, but I love MH, and since I have MH, it works out well :)