[spleen93]

This is a very difficult topic to discuss in an online forum because people like different colors in their tanks. This is somewhat easy to compensate for with MH by using different bulbs (and to some extent different ballasts) and very easy to compensate for with T5s by varying the bulb mix. This is usually somewhat difficult to adjust for with LEDs since a lot depends on the batch/bin of the LEDs that you/they use to build it. Sure, you can adjust the blue/white mix with dimming but this won't replace the frequencies that are missing in the lights to start off with. This could be mitigated if the LED manufacturers came up with a simple way to plug and play different LEDs into their mounts/connectors allowing people to customize the color to their preference, much like T5s.

The other problem with this discussion is the usage of pictures. As we all know, taking pictures and using them as a basis for comparison between different tanks/people is problematic because so much depends on the photographer's ability to render color accurately (set white balance properly) and also because LED tanks are notoriously difficult to photograph properly (the end photos tend not to look anything like how the tank looks like in person).

Regardless, I agree with scolley that this is a worthy topic of discussion and I'm very interested in what comes out of it though I've pointed out a few issues with methodology. While all of my tanks are currently LED lit, my primary motivation for this was electrical savings (hard to ignore when your electrical bill runs around $400 - 600 a month) with color rendition and growth a second and third. I'm certainly not wed to the technology since I originally dumped my Solaris and went to an ATI Powermodul a few iterations back.