So, I think I may be uniquely qualified to answer this question. I mostly lurk now a days but some of you older gents might remember me. I have a 660 gal display (120x36x30) and another 800ish gallons behind it in the wet room. sump, frag tanks, ect.
I've experimented with *THE BEST* lights money can buy over my display. Since my wet room is sealed from the rest of the house, I can cycle outside air in for evaporation cooling in massive amounts (I have 2 massive duct blowers) so heat is never an issue for me. I have Very large colonies (I have monties that are over 100 lbs) so I know what shading patterns are like.
Let me explain, in practical terms, what each technology offers you at the highest end fixtures:
T5. I had 2 12 bulb sfigoli(sp?) 5 footers over the tank. If I remember right at 1500 watts of t5. Color mixed changed over time but it settled somewhere around 22k. Don't ask the individual bulbs because there were ALOT of them. Aqua blues, specials, ect.
The Pros: Best growth out of any technology. Really. Best tune-able color combination when 100% lit. Best shading and shadowing.... there were none. Pretty good heat dissipation since very little IR going into the water.
The Cons: 24 bulbs! Try changing these every 6 months. You want to shoot yourself. Not on the cost side (although its substantial) but on the actual process. Individual reflectors need to be wiped down.. all 24 of them. No shimmer like MH or led. Lack of shadows can make the tank look Windex like. When not fully lit (lighting bulbs in banks for sunup/sundown effects) color combinations can be a bit wonky. Since you have a massive slab of a fixtures (or 2 in my case) you'll have to swab the glass weekly to get the salt spray off. This is a giant PITA. Lastly, and most important, the FANS. Since the balasts are inside the fixtures, the fans, WILL fail. Then the balasts will fail. You'll have failures starting the 2nd year if in an enclosed room. Just be prepared to work on them.
MH: Radium 400's with high end Ebalasts and VHO near UV lighting. In my case 4 400's with high end reflectors, and 660 watts of VHO uv. Picking your reflectors and remote balasts in my mind is better and more flexable than buying an all in one fixture. In this case spending more $ on an all in one is not "better". $ was not a factor for me.
The Pros: as a user stated, there is something MAGICAL about the look of these bulbs. From a pure aesthetic standpoint, this is the best viewing technology. I tried to tune t5's to look like them, but its just not possible. You can get close, but its not the same. My growth is not as good as the T5's. The coral colors, as far as reflected pigments are as good as t5's, but the color shifted fluorescent pigments are NOT as good as t5. The problem is that I think the Radiums overpower the UV. Plus the UV is not hitting the entire excitation ranges you need. t5's can be tuned to hit them ALL. Reds look better under t5. I tried moving 660 watts of uv to just one side of the tank to see if I doubled it if it would mater. It did not.
MH's are MUCH easier to maintain. 4 Bulb changes every 9 months and the bulbs change like magic compared to t5. Balasts are remote and require no fan. Bingo! Wiping down the reflectors every bulb change is pretty easy compared to t5. I don't run glass in my fixtures, just wide open. They are mounted much higher than the t5's for the same spread so not as much splash. Bulbs are cheaper as a whole lot if that matters. changing the vho's is much easier also.
The Cons: Heat into your tank. IR will penetrate. You WILL raise your water temp. In my case 2250 watts compared to 1500ish watts of T5 for the sameish light output. Dimming sucks.. there is no dimming. UV runs as sunrise/sunset which is NOT a good viewing experience. I don't like it and neither do the fish. corals don't care.
You can burn yourself reaching into your tank. It hurts. Alot. Trust me.
LED. Ive tried nearly all the high end fixtures. AI,radions ect.
Pros: Way less heat. You are going to need nearly (75% to 80%) the same wattage as your t5 setup. I'll get into that in a second. good general shimmer. No bulb changes (Not taking into account upgrading). Good reflective color rendition but poor fluorescent color rendition on all mainstream commercial units. (there are wavelength gaps). Wonderful ,and I mean WONDERFUL software to tweak color and sunrise/sunset. This is most often completely overlooked especially if your display is a main part of your house.
Cons: Terrible Growth. I'm sorry, its true. Yes you CAN grow SPS. Just don't expect the same kind of growth as a t5 setup. my previous generation sol fixtures grew coral at, I estimate, 25% of the rate of my t5 setup. In my t5 setup I was dosing 5 GALLONS of saturated Alk and 5 GALLONS of calcium a week.
Way, and I mean WAY too much white in the commercial fixtures. White is useless besides for viewing. Growth comes from the blue spectrum. Which also leads to that the blue spectrum is not WIDE enough in LED fixtures. All really high end T5 fixtures that grow and fluoresce are blue. They just are. Radium is Blue. It just is. If you want sps growth you want BLUE spectrum. So to get that amount of blue you need to OVER BUY on the fixtures. Turn white down to 20-30% at most and have blue jacked all the way up. So you are buying about 80% of the wattage but only using 55ish% of it.
Shadowing. Its there and noticeable. You can NOT mount a single fixture over a wide tank and expect spread. On my 36" width I have to mount 2 fixtures front to back to avoid shadowing. Even so its still there. The light source is much more "point like" than a MH because of the way the MH reflector bounces light. The shadows can be annoying.
Longevity scares me. I've not run any of the fixtures long enough to know what will break. Knowing how simple t5's are and how much they fail in a wet room with them I'm afraid the failures could be even more dramatic after 2 years with LED. I just don't know. I DO know that if it has a fan, the fan WILL fail.
Do it yourself LED: Aka Evil Cluster, ect.
I'm playing with building fixtures now. I'm trying to get the light spectrum and dim-ability of a t5 setup (better dim-ability) with the look and pop and feel of a Radium. With no more shadows than that of a Radium.
So far no go, but I've just started. Could this be the "Best". Maybe. I'll see.
For *ME* right now the Radium setup is the one I use. The look coupled with maintenance makes it the best that money can buy. I supplemented it with stringing a strip of LED's over the tank for sunrise and sunset effects. They are just 1 watters. No growth from them, just for me and the fish
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