You pretty much hit the nail on the head with regards to one of the biggest issues in lighting today. Manufacturers will select certain LED colors that are less expensive and put them in their fixtures, which has a good ability to boost PAR numbers, however those colors are not within any of the photosynthetic peak ranges. The manufacturers have traditionally been misleading for good cause - when a person is shopping for light, they only have numbers to compare with other manufacturers. Most people don't want to do the research, they just have heard that "high PAR = good" and leave it at that. Higher PAR values in the specifications leads to better sales, etc.
Steve, the owner of the company I work for, is a very experienced and successful aquarist, and has almost two decades of devotion to improving this hobby. He is a good guy, and never met a stranger if you know what I mean. He cares more about putting out a product that works and encouraging other people to enjoy the hobby, rather than spend his life trying to make as much money as possible before he dies (perhaps he his not very "American" in not partaking in this this "get rich quick as you can" traditional sense, but he is patriotic!). Knowing that, the LED systems that he engineers have LEDs that have been heavily scrutinized before being selected and the fixtures are scientifically proven to grow corals at exceptional rates, typically exceeding growth rates found in the ocean by several fold. This is because we provide more of the essential wavelengths, and reduce the wavelengths that are not absorbed by chlorophyll. Oddly, our systems, when compared side by side with other "comparable" LED systems, namely Kessil, Radion, etc, our LED systems are significantly brighter, and simply grow coral better. This is due to the higher quality LEDs being used, and be better engineered design to allow the LEDs to run cooler.
Here's a tid bit of info for you folks looking to learn a little more about how LEDs work in a marine lighting fixture:
-An LED that consumes 3W will output significantly more light when running at 25°C than one running at 85°C, yet they will consume the same amount of electricity and last much longer. This is why it is important to have a well engineered LED system that runs as cool as possible.
-A no-name brand LED from china will consume 3W of power and produces less than half of the lumens than a quality Luxeon ES LED that is using that same 3W of power.
-LEDs of the same brand are categorized by their manufacturer, this way when a manufacturer orders say, 10,000 LEDs at a time, that manufacturer can be sure to receive LEDs of the same brightness - this is called binning, and any quality LED will have a BIN code associated with it.
For example, with the Luxeon ES Royal Blue LED, Part # LXML-PR02. You can purchase this exact LED with different BIN codes (brightnesses). One BIN code can be 500mw of light output (that's about 30 lumens), and another BIN code could be 1200mw (that's about 72 lumens). The lowest output LEDs are what you typically see on Ebay, if you look up Luxeon ES Royal Blue that cost ~$1.25/ea. You think you are getting an amazing LED for the price at first glance, but in fact, you are getting a bottom-of-the-barrel LED. If you order from a company that posts BIN codes, you know what you will be getting. If you purchase a Luxeon ES Royal Blue LED off of StevesLEDs.com, then you know exactly what you are getting for $2.50/ea.
Ebay - 500mw for 1.25/ea = $0.0025 per mw.
StevesLEDS.com - 1200mw for $2.50 = $0.0208 per mw. That is a difference of 17% cheaper cost per lumen by going with the brighter LED. Furthermore, you will need fewer drivers and power supplies to run these fewer, brighter LEDs, and use much less electricity as well.
So basically going with a higher quality LED, you get 240% more light for only 200% more cost - which is a better value.
I'm only telling you this because so many LED brands are deceptive nowadays - and nobody regulates the imports from china, so they could say that their "168W" LED fixture is 168W, when in fact, it is outputting less than half the light intensity as a quality brand's light that consumes only 84W.
Steve's LEDs has a goal to express REAL numbers, and as always, let the success of LED fixture be known for it's ability to actually grow corals and other inverts, not just what the specifications say it can do. Take a look around on the forums, I don't think we have ever had a report that our LED systems would not grow a specific species of coral, clam or anemone, and that is from more than 8,000 LED systems sold. Because of this, that makes our company the only company to guarantee that our LED fixtures are guaranteed to grow all species of photosynthetic corals* (so long as the water quality parameters are within "normal" ranges).
We will be posting the ACTUAL (that means anybody can put one in their aquarium and repeat these results, no "ideal" or "laboratory" conditions required) results regarding light output, wavelengths, intensity and PAR values for all of our fixtures, and I challenge all other manufacturers to do the same.
I love this stuff!
Jeff
