Here are a few crappy cell phone pic's. Excuse the tanks and mess, I'm in the middle of redoing my mancave/fishroom. Also these are the nasty yellow leds, they really wash out the colors of the fish.
After the lights were on for 30min, barely warm to the touch (the housing does get hot).
Video's (I kept them between 10-20 seconds):
*My phone overexposes so the lights are not as bright as they appear. The metal halide hotspots are not noticable in person. I didn't want to clutter up my youtube account so these are posted on tinypic, sorry no embedding.
52g with 2 leds - this works, looks a little better with the lights held up about 6"
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125g with 3 leds - this worked too. The lights are not spaced evenly because the cords were too short and the divider blocks a lot of light. There is some shadowing at the top but lifting the lights 6" should take care of most of that. All in all I'll take it.
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180g one 70w metal halid, one 10w led. On the 180 I think you need one light for every foot of tank. They look pretty comparable in the video but the leds' aren't bright enough. Also the MH have a good bit of shimmer, the phone cam is washing it out. The leds have a considerable amount more. The MH blubs are about 1.5yrs old.
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180g 3 leds - would work for frontosa or other fish that don't like bright light. But I think 6 would look better, I have doubts as to how plants would do.
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220g one 150w mh, 3 leds in same 2' section - this might work, The lower light level was starting to grow on me, but I need to see the lights in bright white to see how the fish colors look. The 30w just may do it. I bet the 50w are comparable to the 150w mh (the mh blub is nearly 3yrs old, the intensity of the light has dimminshed to the point that there is very little shimmer even though the surface has lots of aggatation). At this point 50w may be too much for me. Again the MH are not as bright in person as they appear in the video. As I said the subtle light is growing on me; the room is wrapped with tanks having them bright enough to show but not so bright as to light the room.
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I'm more or less sold on these. It will take more then I hoped to handle the deeper tanks. For my viewing pleasure I think one led per 2' section will be enough up to standard 125g.