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Sanjay - Many pages back you asked for a piece of low iron glass to evaluate as a DE shield. Did you ever get a piece to look at?

Sanjay, are you still testing out reflectors? Any chance you will be testing the Coralvue Lumen Bright?

Quick question I now use a Aquactinics 175W MH with 2 t5s on my 54 corner tank -This unit sits right on top of my glass hood.
How much light is lost using a glass hood ?
I also may try to lift the unit a few inches of the glass ,how high should it be

Sorry if this has been asked and answered, I did scroll through several pages. I just bought a Ushio 20k 250E DE bulb. I'm trying to get PPFD values for it from Sanjay's site. Is it the same bulb as the Giesemann 250W Blue (58 w/M80) or the other Giesemann 250W 20k (43) which seems to be the same as the HIT (BLV)20K bulb? Or is it something different?

I have a shallow tank (18" plus 4" of sand) and have been running a phoenix 14K. My corals have been bleaching a little; I want to try a lower intensity bulb or a while to see what happens. I just fired up the ushio and it definitely appears less bright, and a little "bluer" and less "purple." I know thing will change as it gets burned in. My main queston is, do I now have a bulb which tests at 58PPFD or 43? My ballast is the PFO HQI.

Thanks!!

Matt

Sanjay,
Have you tested the new Sunlight supply Galaxy electronic ballast yet. I'm curious about the 175 w & 250 how they compare to the ice cap electronic ballast.

I have been away for 4 months and can't believe anyone is discussing anything but Solaris LED. It's now a year old and I have not one issue. CLAMS,HARD,SOFT.SPS,LPS,LMNOP ROCKIN 150%
FORGET MH !

I have one issue with them..... PRICE!

Second issue - coverage on tanks wider than 18".

Another issue... Product life cycle. LED's are developing faster than computer CPU's in the 90's. Buy a pentium 2 today, and wish you had waited out for the pentium 3 a few months later. Already, the Solaris is on the 3rd version. LED's that are 3x the output of the I4 are just around th corner...

Ill buy in when 2 things happen:

The lumen efficiency of the LED itself (no optical focusing tricks) hits 150 lumens/watt... so I can light 500g with only 200 watts of light. Yeah, Im serious, just wait and see.

And the other is a wider range of available spectrums... I cant stand the 'washed out' 20,000K look. I like my blue, dont get me wrong, but I like my daylight too. I dont want my pink birdsnest and red milli to wash out under the lack of a full spectrum.

No, I have not. It has been my expereince that there is very little difference between the electronic ballasts.

sanjay.

I do not doubt the ability of the LED to grow corals.

The pace of developments in LED is very rapid.. following moore's law for computers. The point at which people buyin will be different for different people... I still don't have a large screen plasma/lcd TV. :(

sanjay.

I just bought a set of blueline 14k 400w bulbs thinking that they are the BLV's. Do you know who makes these and what the PAR ratings are. I wanted the blue look changing from EVC 10Ks; the PAR was listed as nearly the same with the BLV's. Now I may be in for a big loss with the bluelines. Any information on them would be a help.
Sanjay, any testing on the Blueline 400's to come?

I had the 175 W Blueline 14K lamp with a Mag 57 balllast I LOVED the look of this lamp
http://www.bluelineaquatics.com/prod...amp/index.html
I just switched to the XM 20K and the tank is by far whiter and brighter
I may switch back
I keep softies so I think the blueline may be fine for me althow the par is major difrence from the Blueline to the XM
The test was on the 250W blueline and it was in the dumps BUT Looks great

Thanks Antman.
I hope that the 400's have better PAR.
I wonder who really makes the Blueline equipment?

what balast are you using ?
400 W got to have much better par over the 250s Just might not be as hige as most other 400 W

I am using the EVC e-ballast.

Well right now we have several draw backs on the LED's.

First off as the Meister mentioned the balancing of the spectrum. By there vary nature LED's produce a very narrow spectrum of light. Therefore the requrement of different LED's to cover the full spectrum. Fortunatly some newer LED's are comming out that do have a broader spectrum of light than earlier versions.

Second is price. They are not a proven item with a very high demand level. When you purchase one now probably .75 on the dollar is going into the R and D that got them to this point and only .25 for actual product. This compares to probably .05 on an established system.

Third. The science of LED's is changing extremly fast. Most people realize that what they buy today will be outdated and cheaper a year from now. As it has been noted it is like the peak time of computer progress. I remember when a 486 computer costed $5,000 and a year later you get a Pentium for $3.000. While I don't think LED technology has hit that point yet I see it the transition point between the 386 and 486 today. So if we can wait long enough when with the Pentium III come out in LED technology?

If you follow the R and D end of the LED developments you will easily see that what is just being released today is well beyound what was the top of the line 3 months ago. Now it will probably take 6 months to 2 years to get the present state of the art into an aquarium hood especially considering we are a very small segment of the market for LED's.

Lighting a 500 gallon with 200 watts? Well getting enough LUM's to get that job done is no big deal even today, But to get a nice visual color balance plus a high enough PAR in the frequencies that keep corals happy is probably a few years off. But if we look far enough ahead we might be aiming at 50 watts to get the job done. Then you will sorry you bought the 200 Watt set up.

Dennis
'

Lighitng Website Updates
 

Sanjay,
Just started back in the hobby again. Glad to see you are still heavily involved.
I have a question for you. I am starting an acropora tank, and I would like to try the 12000K CoralVue 400watt bulbs, will my old M59 ballasts give me reasonable performance, or should I change to new ballasts, and if yes, what type?
Thanks for you help.
Doug K
(formally reefman@voicenet.com,
formally Pittsburgh, now Port Deposit, MD.

ps...how's the Penn State tank doing?

JMCHZN, what series of solaris do you have? How is the heat? I'm thinking very seriously about get the new I-4 series. Any thoughts other than you haven't had any issues? Thanks

"First off as the Meister mentioned the balancing of the spectrum."
I saw the solaris at my local reef club in person and you can adjust it infinitely I was told.

I also used a Lux meter first hand and it was constant unlike a halide so All the corals get a more even amount of brighter than T-5's and comprable to some new halides!

( I recently tested them in a store many new t-5's aginst old worn out 12kReefluk was similar but nothing comared to new metal halides)

Sure there are presets but if you tinker with it the sky's the limit
As I understand it!

:-)

Paul

You can adjust them with just the LEDs that they have is what they mean. The white LED's are dominant in the blue spectrum (alot like an Aquablue/actinic white T5), with less green, and little to no yellow-red. The blue 450-460nm LED's are just that, and same for the 420nm actinics. They have added some green LED's to suppliment this spectrum which is otherwise lacking, and I wonder how long until some 3000Kish or Red LED's are worked in? Recent tests in Germany have shown that althoug corals seem to benefit from blue light more than other spectrums as far as growth is concerned, I will cite all the pigmentation prolems that lights that are dominant in blue can create. I have a buddy who used to run his tank with nothing but radiums and VHO actinics. I convinced him to go with Ushio 14,000Ks and supplimental blue+ T5s, and you wouldnt believe how the corals colored in. Previously, there were corals that were blue/purple because there was no other choice... gold tip and red corals that were purple and blue. After the switch... I couldnt believe all the choice corals he had collected all that time and nobody would ever have known. Golden colored acros with red tips had their colors back... pinks were pink... he could grow poscillipora again...something that he couldnt do before with all that blue for some reason. Dana Riddle cites in his review the huge dominance of the blue spectrum in the Solaris as a major bonus... yet some German researchers would say the opposite, as light sources too dominant in blue have also been shown to cause photoinhibition easier than 'fuller spectrum' sources.

currently I have tried 14K ushio DE 250 watt HQI Pfo ballast and it looked too yellow the light never changed and I never knew it was defective untill I got a pheonix 14K and now I am switching to reeflux 10K.

It seems Every one is quick to say whats wrong, to them ,about led's yet they do have advantages and do in the long run work well it's just too much money up front for me!!

:-) Paul

Actually, I think the new I4's are the first ones which can give halides a run for the money. Now its just a matter of the spread and cost (and spectrum, but Im sure that will follow as well).

One big downside I see to the LED's is what happens if the unit fails? You gotta ship the whole beast back to the factory for repair? I would be waiting for them to be made modular before I would consider owning one.