As we all know, this hobby is always changing and evolving.  New technologies and trends seem to always play a big part.  Over the last couple of years one of the biggest trends seems to be the use of LED lighting.  With that in mind I thought I would share the some what suprizing results of a survey completed by Coral Magazine.  According to a recent article by Coral Magazine 9,000 readers were asked to take a basic survey about aquarium lighting.  The first question was the most obvious: "Which of the following types of lighting are you currently using on your marine aquarium(s)?"  The reader was given a list that included the standard lights (T-5, Metal Halide, Power Compact, LED, etc) and were giving the opportunity to pick as many off of the list that they had in use.  The results were a little unexpected.  Most of the tanks that I have seen use metal halide and or T-5 fluorescent:

LEDs 32.2%

T-5 Fluorescent  26.6%

Metal Halide / HQI / HID  24.2%

Power Compacts  8.1%

T-12 VHO Fluorescent  3.6%

T-8 Fluorescent  2.3%

Natural Sunlight  1.4%

Plasma Lighting  0.2%

T-12 Standard Fluorescent  0.2%

The second question though had an expected result.  The question was "Which of the following types of lighting do you expect to be using on your marine aquarium(s) in five years?"  As you would expect the majority of the people surveyed picked LED lighting:

LEDs  54.3%

T-5 Fluorescent  15.4%

Metal Halide / HQI / HID  14.1%

Plasma Lighting  6.2%

Natural Sunlight  3.6%

T-12 VHO Fluorescent  1.5%

Power Compacts  1.3%

T-8 Fluorescent  0.3%

T-12 Standard Fluorescent  0.1%

If anything I found the survey results to be interesting and I look forward to the September / October 2011 issue of Coral Magazine.  For the rest of the survey click on the Coral Magazine.

So what do you think?  Are LED's the "light of the future?"  What are your lighting plans for the next five years?

[photo: Fridaynightswings]