Are Metal Halides history?

[BeanAnimal]

Originally Posted by BonsaiNut

I would personally refer to the above tech spec from CREE, the warranty from reputable light manufacturers, and the real-life experience of reefers who are going on 18+ months now with AI fixtures without a measurable loss in PAR before I would rely on any general "myth debunking" article. Reef lighting is a very specific end use. If you aren't evaluating LED's and fixtures designed specifically for this end use, I question the validity of any LED article - either Pro OR Con.

You are picking and choosing what to put faith in based on your fondness of the technology. Your justification is your belief in the manufacturers claims and the fact that OEMs are using the product and basing their warranty period on those claims. The logic is classic fallacy

Not to keep using that word, but many of your points have been posed in this manner. While many of your conclusions with regard to the technology may end up being true, the evidence that you present to support those conclusions (in most cases here) has been fallacy.

That is, you like LEDs so you trust what the LED manufactures say. You feel that anybody who presents information that shows differently is biased against LEDs and therefore the information is not valid.

The point was (and the facts are) that the numbers we have to go on are provided by the manufacturers. Those numbers are for the most part projected guesses, ecelerated time testing, and based on somewaht ideal conditions and competative market positioning. Some who have attempted to test the conditions in real world use have found the projections to be exceedling high.

You may wish to note that the spectral output of many LEDs DO relay on phoshpors and phoshors do degrade based on time, heat, etc. The same can be said about the degredation of the diode junction, the chemical clarity of plastic and other aspects of the driver over time and different temperature profiles.

[BonsaiNut]

Originally Posted by ksc

"the real-life experience of reefers who are going on 18+ months now with AI fixtures without a measurable loss in PAR."

Interesting. Do you have a link to any of these tests? I'd love to see some results using both a spectrometer and par meter. I wonder how many "reputable light manufacturers" warranty their fixtures for 50,000 hours?

I'm not aware of any LED manufacturer who currently warranties their fixtures for lumen maintenance(?) It would be nice, but they probably don't want to be held liable for conditions outside of their control (like high ambient operating temps, etc). I could easily see someone installing a hanging LED fixture inside an aquarium hood - and burning up their LED's in a year or two because the fixture can't vent.

I went back 18 pages (!) in the lighting forum and could only find this one thread:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2065927

Certainly in this case time will tell. No one will be able to definitely answer the question about LED reef fixture lifetimes until we have some 5 and 6 year-old fixtures out there.

[Paul B]

LED manufacturers really can't say what their product will do after 50,000 of use because I don't think many LED systems used today have been operating that long.
Mine is only a few months old so I will let you know in 10 years. (If I am still alive.)

[Mental1]

Wow -- fun read. First law of thermodynamics and all. So I have a constellation T5 with 14 3 foot bulbs. I have another 3 foot T5 fixture with 5 bulbs. I spend $300 every 9 months to replace my bulbs. Drives me crazy. I wanted LED when the first solara came out. Too expensive. Bought 3 AI's in July and may need to add one more for a total of $2000. If they last 6 years that's $1800 in bulbs that won't need replacing. That's my logic. Really bummed that I hung them Sunday and read about the drop in price. Oh well, my bad luck. They are designed to be upgradeable according to AI. As they go along they will add in more light for the fuller spectrum I am sure. But boy do they need a business manager. Too many geeks I think! Too many people love MH for them to go away very soon ... facts won't change that but perhaps a law will. But I doubt that will happen for a very long time. Meantime -- my corals look great under the LEDs ... day 3. (-;

[Paul B]

Too expensive. Bought 3 AI's in July and may need to add one more for a total of $2000. If they last 6 years that's $1800 in bulbs that won't need replacing.

Thats way more than all the stuff I bought for lighting in the last 40 years, way more.

[Mental1]

Paul -- you don't buy bulbs?

[acpoweradapter]

Originally Posted by Mental1

Wow -- fun read. First law of thermodynamics and all. So I have a constellation T5 with 14 3 foot bulbs. I have another 3 foot T5 fixture with 5 bulbs. I spend $300 every 9 months to replace my bulbs. Drives me crazy. I wanted LED when the first solara came out. Too expensive. Bought 3 AI's in July and may need to add one more for a total of $2000. If they last 6 years that's $1800 in bulbs that won't need replacing. That's my logic. Really bummed that I hung them Sunday and read about the drop in price. Oh well, my bad luck. They are designed to be upgradeable according to AI. As they go along they will add in more light for the fuller spectrum I am sure. But boy do they need a business manager. Too many geeks I think! Too many people love MH for them to go away very soon ... facts won't change that but perhaps a law will. But I doubt that will happen for a very long time. Meantime -- my corals look great under the LEDs ... day 3. (-;

AI is supposed to be doing some sort of promo for people who bought early. They said it would be on their website sometime soon.

[Paul B]

Paul -- you don't buy bulbs?

Now I do, well not anymore since I switched to LEDs but all the years I had MH I would buy 2 bulbs about every 18 months. Before that it was VHO, PC and regular flourescent lamps, but $2,000.00? I could buy a lot of bulbs for that. As an electrician sometimes I got them for free also.
Don't forget, I only change some water 5 or 6 times a year, and I sometimes collect it, I make my own calcium, buy most of the food in a supermarket, have solar panels on my roof to make electricity and don't use any other additives. I also built my skimmer, chiller, stand, lighting system and many of the rocks, the rest of the rocks I collected myself in the sea so I find this hobby very cheap.