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 Most people realize that what they buy today will be outdated and cheaper a year from now.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
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Originally posted by hahnmeister
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.
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