Switching to MH from LED--advice

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.

Good choice - I went from MH to LEDs when all the craze started 4-5 years ago, but am back to MH.  I like the deeper coloration MH produces in my sps corals - nothing beats a Radium bulb in appearance.  Enjoy the plug and play lighting.

Edited by bur01014 - February 14 2016 at 1:20pm

When I first started looking to change, I could barely find anyone selling MH setups.  But I know a lot of the old timers still use them.  Some of the nicest aquariums I have ever seen were running MH.  

I Also am going back to MH Lighting, I have Been Doing Salt Water Now for Over 20 Years, and have used all different Equipment, I Thought the LED'S Were The Answer,,, BUT,, They are lacking Something,, Can't Put my finger on it ,,, BUT,,, Something bout the LED'S,, Any ways,, just switched Back To Metal Halides,, I Was always concerned about the Heat they put off,,, Im just going to have to buck up and Purchase a chiller,, I have them back on my 180 gallon system now for 4 days and can see a noticeable difference already,, in my corals, AND, Just all around looks of the Aquarium,, That Halide Shimmer (I MISSED) CANT BE BEAT, I THINK WHEN A NEW AQUARIUM hobby CRAZE COMES OUT FOR SALE,, everybody JUMPS ABOARD thinking ,, THIS MANY PEOPLE CANT BE WRONG,,, well,,, IN THIS led VS HALIDES,, yes,,  WRONG,, LOVE MY METAL HALIDES,, IM GLAD TO BE BACK using THEM,, I CUT DOWN ON THE WATTAGE By Burning 175 Watts instead of the 250 watt bulbs ,, but,,, UPGRADED THE REFLECTORS TO PFO REFLECTORS,, 99 percent LIGHT REFLECTION RETURN,, AND LESS WATT'S MEANS LESS POWER BILL,, AND I HOPE NOT AS HOT,, All of us in this Aquatic hobby are looking to upgrade and better our Equipment,, BUT,, LED"S Are not for me,,

What LEDs were you using?

Oh, I need to add that for about 3 months I was running one of those foreign made black box LED's, an upgraded one with blue and red on one circuit, white and green on the other, on one of my tanks. This tank had previously had fluorescent lights(50% blue, 25% actinic, 25% pink/purple with t5 tubes). It wasn't looking as good under the LED's, so I put the fluorescent fixture back over it.  Within a few days, coral were hydrating(expanding) better, had better polyp extension and started showing better overall color.

That reefbright halide hybrid looks awesome!! 

Someday when I have some cash, I might look into that.

I was wrong and had incorrectly recalled the cost, but I never intended to offend. Please forgive me. I cannot help but refer to the good stuff that was shared here for a while which was very intelligent and informative. 

Bingo, Krazie!

Krazie4Acans wrote: So while this may not be true for all LED's, there are some out there that can outperform T5 lighting in both growth and color.

Wow strong statement.  Would be wonderful to find LEDs perform better than T5 in terms of the growth I obtained in my tank throughout the course of a year.


































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. 




Edited by bur01014 - February 17 2016 at 12:19pm