[gray]

Hi Guys,girls
currently using 2x400 watt lumenarcs ( expensive to run )
been looking at replacing with KR92 or TMC tile , both LED systems
any body using them or advice thoughts on them keeping sps,etc

quite a outlay but very cheap to run , looked alsoi at t5 but still expensive to run in numbers

any help, advice don't want to waste money
thanks

[dave14]

I would stick to the halides, led technology still quite new and unproven imo, especially for sps maybe wait a year or 2 see how it develops

Tony (karnivor) had a led setup but changed to halides

[Social D]

2x 400w are overated if i had my way id switch back to 250w .. If somebody can actually show me some benifits in using 400w over 250w id be inter tested ... And i dont mean a minutes reading on the internet, some hard results between the two would be great.

used both and think 400w isnt needed unless one keeps acros at the bottom of a 26 inch tank, even saying that 250w is fine and can keep colour.

Ive got 400w and cant be arsed to sell and re-buy, But in hindsight i wish i never bought 400w.

pah

[ChrisR]

Good point Tim,

I actually did what you have said and went from 400's back to 250's and lost no colour whatsoever, in a standard 24" deep tank, the 400's created quite abit of exra heat in the tank with a daily swing of 3deg, then after going back to 250's the sweing was only 1 deg and much more stable. Didn't seem to make much difference to growth either, then again you could do what Trev does and uses a 6500K bulb for growth then switch over to a higher kelvin bulb for colour once the tank starts to fill out.

Then again i sold up the halides and went for T5's and dont regret it one bit.

Chris.

[jason@jasonsaquatics]

Thought you said your sps colour and growth were way better with 400ws over the 250ws Tim.

400w you will get a better growth formation with the corals over the 250ws but like said 250ws will do the job ok

Systems differ system to system ,ie Low fed systems ,I'm using low fed rather than the other name as not to take topic into a different direction.
Its a trend set now that you can run t5s over an sps system and if you want you can add a lot of fancy colour tubes to highlight fluorescent colours from the corals ,zooxanthellae that you wouldn't see in a normal lit tank,How this will work long term i don't know ,i have my opinion but again not for this thread .

I have seen some stunning 250w systems with corals doing well ,very well but for me i like the 400ws for the sort of system i would keep as i like the idea of higher light loving sps low down in a tank and i feel long term with corals getting larger the 400ws will give you the edge over the 250ws .

So many factors come to mind to as we haven't mentioned what K lamps we would recommend as this to has a huge factor in what wattage your do better with .

Trev is doing well with 250ws and has corals down low ,but he is running 6500ks nice one Trev .

To sum it all up ,Do you run UNLS, how many fish do you have ,how deep is your tank ,how many gallon is your system,how big are your corals ,what do you keep sps lps or soft corals . Maybe we shouldn't look at what corals we have but what corals can we keep under a said light system as some may not justify paying out a huge lecy bill for higher watt lighting and if this is the case for most i find it a pity we all have to look at the lecy bill because the money grabbing sods are holding us back

IMO of what i have seen and predicted when Tony first run LEDs on his sps system ,,No way


Jas

[ChrisR]

Jas,

Be interested to hear your opinions on T5's m8. To me its just another form of lighting a tank which like everything has its good points and bad. And IMO you dont need to be running a probiotic system to HAVE to run T5's, for me the the colour to the eye of the bulb combination im running now is the same as when i was running 2 x 400W Reeflux 12k's.

If you have a look on Zeo forum's then you will see that alot of the tanks on there are actually lit with halides supplimented with VHO lighting. Again dosent matter what type of lighting we use the reefer will change to whatever suits his eye.

Chris.

[gray]

Thanks for the replys Gents

looks like the led are a no go , saved me a lot of money , one of the great things about this forum

looks like big leccy bills from now on

thanks
Gray

[jason@jasonsaquatics]

Hi m8
Old rule is watts per gallon ,my question is how many tubes are you running on your tank now ,,400w 500w

We know that T5 lighting will keep a system going if you have enough T5 watts over the tank to do it .

One thing that does bat in the corner for t5s is the even light spread you get with them that you wont get with a spot halide system (IE shadows caused by bigger grown out corals).This will give more lighting to areas of shade ,but this is only ok is you have the watts per gallon as 1 56watt t5 tube wont do the job alone (Watts per gallon) .

The reason UNLS systems do well with T5s is the food ratio conversion to energy ,IE feed a tank heavy and the coral takes more food then your need the watts per gallon to to help convert the food into energy via photosynthesis but with UNLS less nutrient ie food source then less light needed to help convert via photosynthesis .
This doesn't mean you don't need lighting but means the lighting requirements are less because the coral doesn't need to photosynthesis as much .

Why do i like halides 400s over a sps tank ,i can raise the lights a little with the punch of the 400s and keep light loving sps at the bottom of the tank .Also long term health of corals IMO is to hit the right balance of food and light and not one alone and IMO if i were to feed my corals a lot of food that i would have to punch more t5 watts per gallon into the system to keep up with the punch 400s will give .

Like said it all depends on how you run your system when it comes to food, t5s IMO wont cut it unless your atleast 5 watts per gallon long term as the bigger the coral gets the more light it will need (This rule is also for halides not just t5 lighting)

Good topic and these are only my views so feel free to give yours as all views in this hobby should be taken onboard



jas

[ChrisR]

Jas,

Good post m8 and agree with what you say. Yes i run alot of T5's over the tank - 800W to be exact!! so the same as running 2 x 400W but with less heat transferance (big thing in my case as i dont need to run a chiller), wish i had a light meter to give some PAR readings.

However i tend to disagree on the ULNS bit (dont like the term either as it implies something its not - dont belive the hype ) as any tank can achieve the supposed ULNS parameters near natural seawater, applying different methology's - take Si G's system for example ( and i wouldnt say his tank was starved but he still achieved low N and P values using more conventional methods. However forget all the colour tweaking potions, and look a bare probiotic system which is just another methology for dealing with excess nutrients(nitrate and phosphate especially) like a DSB, tons of live rock, algae beds, sulphur reactors etc etc (again forget who's system it is whether ZVit/FM or Prodibio or just using the bacteria already present in your system and dosing vodka - most basic of these systems but all work on the same principle). Now just because we are using this as a means of nutrient control and not something else does not mean we cannot feed the system as like any of the other means. Its all about balancing the system as a whole therefore if i want to feed more heavily i can using the probiotic approach, just increase the cardon dose to suit so that the probable increase in nutreints are dealt with as such.

To me it makes sense to run this on my system as im restricted space wise so its easy for me to use this method, and still feed my system appropriatly. Ive read through all the different manufacturers bumff and made my own mind up as to how to use there system to my benifit.

JMO,

Chris

[ChrisR]

Sorry Gray bit of topic

[gray]

ChrisR, on Nov 14 2009, 01:24 PM, said:

Sorry Gray bit of topic

Please don't apoligise chris , this is why i joined this forum and exactly why it was highly recommended to me
besides you lot saved me £1000 plus today thanks
cheers

[lindsay]

For me its about the amount of overall light put over the corals,if a coral can photosynthesize at a depth of 6"" directly under a 250w lamp thats cool but will it still be ok if you put the same coral deeper and not directly under the lamp.I supose you could say that the old so many watts per gallon is the way to base it but at the same time you could put one 250 watt lamp over one coral in a 10ft tank and it would still be ok lol.

[jason@jasonsaquatics]

Hi Chris

Not saying you cant feed ,but saying in a lot of UNLS you know what i mean lol Dosed tanks ,sugar vodka Zeo/fm filters with the added bottles a lot don't feed like you .If your asking can you mix the 2 dose and feed hell why the hell not i would .

I do have a question to ask you ,If you were to Take off 200wtts of light from your system and stop dosing for 6 months still keeping your N and P levels low what would you expect to see ,,i guess your see a drop in colour .
Ok after this 6 months don't add the 200wtts of light again but start to dose and after a while you will see a rise in colour again ,why well to hazard a guess ,,this is a guess i would say that the bacteria process with dosing is dealing with the nutrient added with the food faster than a no dose tank that reallies on the system itself to deal with it.
This will leave a lot of water bound food (Liquid) for the corals and this is why the corals will need to photosynthesis more rather than a tank that is dosed and with bacteria or a carbon so the skimmer can rip it out fast .

I would say this is why you can get away with less lighting on a Zeo/fm and other systems rather than a tank run on the no dose aspect .

I think UNLS is only ULNS you you choose to push it that far ,i would say if your feeding well your not and your just useing it to keep your tank at NSW levels ,like said its just another way

Jas

[ChrisR]

Jas,

On my tank i probably could get away with less t5's and stopping dosing the bac's and carbon source, i have stopped the dosing before for 3 months and the nitrate rises from undetectable to around 2ppm in my system which is basically nothing really, but its phosphate thats a bugger due to the amounts that i feed. But remember i have out balanced the system intentionally by using less rock than the rule of thumb, as it was always my plan to go with a probiotic system letting the bacteria colonise the stones. I run a bastardized probiotic system, as i still run a few things the Zeo gods say you shouldnt and it works for me.

Okay i think were trying to make the same sort of point, but here's my take on what i think- so if you take any tank thats runs on the berlin method without any other means of N and P reduction and start to feed heavily to the point that the system cannot handle the load and we have a 400W light source of whatever it is. We have a single coral sitting under the light source at x depth, what then happens to the colour of this coral?? Does it stay the same or does it start to change colour due to the increased nutrients? So we have here a 400w light source with lots of usable light for photosynthisis and also water bound "food" in the form of N and P so the zooxanthellae pigment and quantity change and hence a deepening of the corals colour.

Now we take the same system and reduce the light source from 400W to say 250W what then happens in this case with less usable light and the same excess in nutrients, this will lead to a darkening of the coral as more zooxanthellae is produced to offset the drop in photosynthetic light so the coral can still grow. Now if we dont make any other changes to this system the coral colour will stay the same colour.

So we decide that we want the coral back to the way it was colour wise so we now opt for some form of nutrient control but keep the same light source of 250W and coral depth stays the same as before. With the selected form of nutrient control whatever it maybe we now have very low N and P so the zooanthellae decrease due to the loss of food source, and the coral colour will show through more. However we still dont have the correct amount of photosynthetic light avaliable so the zoo population still remains higher than originally so the coral colour will remain deeper to an extent. So here we could do 1 of 2 things change the position of the coral ie- move it up so the probable amount of light avaliable is increased or change out the light back to the 400W and keep the coral at the same depth. With our new form of nutrient control in place we can also feed the system keeping N and P in check, We have now achieved the correct balance between light and food source so the corals colour is as it should be.

However we now go even further than this and increase the usable light and reduce the food source, in turn reducing the quantity of zooxanthellae in the coral hence the pale colours (most notably how ULNS is perceived), again this can be achieved with any form of nutrient control and over lighting of a coral.

So yes i do agree with what youve said Jas, but that can be acheived with any form of nutrient control and not just probiotics.

Chris.

[lindsay]

Good thread ,so after reading the above,how do you decide what the nutrient levels are in your tank?.

[ChrisR]

Well for me a test kit and my eyes i guess, i can tell once im getting real low on nutrient levels as certain corals do go lighter - look washed out

[Social D]

Excellant Chris , Totally agree the ''Ultra'' should be dropped altogether. Maybe replace it with LINS (low ish nutrient system)
Cant recall saying ive got better colours with 400w , Growth is certainly better , well its bound to be.
Having seen Dave i tank with T5 and the thickness of his formosa .. You have to question the bloody expense of 1x2x3x 400w
Dont believe the hype sums it up perfect Chris, Too many chase the tail that doesnt exsist then moan like mad when something goes wrong
Its just another method which works superb even in a bastardized way its all good


Far too many giving it a bad name tbh from reading other posts more often than not its something else causing problems .. that never get talked about
In the right hands or even in anybody hands that cares to read up for more than a minute it can be a very handy tool to the kitbag

Forget those early tanks, they are like victoria beckham thin skinny and near deaths door, However the majority just like to plod on and be as normal as normal can be without all the make-up

Why do i like halides 400s over a sps tank ,i can raise the lights a little with the punch of the 400s and keep light loving sps at the bottom of the tank .Also long term health of corals IMO is to hit the right balance of food and light and not one alone and IMO if i were to feed my corals a lot of food that i would have to punch more t5 watts per gallon into the system to keep up with the punch 400s will give .

what exactly is that based on? your ex tank or the shop tank? I seem to recall youve only used 250w?

[jason@jasonsaquatics]

Customer experience and the sps shop tank Tim ,living with it day to day

I agree with you on most aspects Chris and TBH we are both barking up the same tree lol but hey has made for a good read .

System to system differ and where 250ws or t5s maybe great for one system 400s will be better for another .
Chris i did have a A4 long reply but i feel some may just use it as an excuse to have a game of tennis and i hated the game as a teenager and not keen on it now lol

Great topic ,and like Chris said sorry for taking this off track Gray


jas

[gray]

No worries good read
interesting point about nutrients because i am using 2x400 watt my sps growth seems slow and lately the coluours haved faded
should i be adding something or testing for them ?

[jason@jasonsaquatics]

Always test m8 as the slow growth maybe down to elevated PO4 .

Bring a water sample in as we can test for you like we did Tims
PO4 is a bad one to have in the tank at high levels and unless testing can slip by you like it did in Tims tank ,,running at between 0.8 and 0.11 on the merc test .

Easy one to let slide unless testing for it

However it may not be PO4 but unless tested it cant be ruled out, but i do put it at the top of list as i have seen tanks with high NO3 and although colour is not very sharp the growth has been very good


jas