Striike
Active Member
On going thread. I'll post more once I can gauge how they do over the long run.
Too early to gauge an opinion, other than they are pretty. My digital camera decided it want to die today, so I'm charging up my Video camera (it can take still shots). They won't be as good quality, but should be good enough to have a look. I'll get some pictures up today for you.
My specs:
75g tank
38g sump
2 clowns
1 yellow tang
1 strawberry goby
1 blue spotted goby
1 blue yellow tailed damsel
1 torch
1 frogspawn
many more corals to come once I am comfortable with what I have.
My thoughts so far. The light is a lot more intense than what I had before. My frogspawn is loving it, but I had to move my torch to the bottom of the tank, and reduce the lighting to 10 hours. It still hasn't expanded out like it used to, but color and consistency tell me its still healthy, just really closed up. I did a light acclimation, starting out with 4 hour white, 6 hour all, and worked up over the course of 2 weeks to 10 white, 12 all. Most of my rock has bleached, so I probably didn't acclimate gradually enough, which may explain my torch being so ticked off at me. I'm hoping with time the torch will acclimate enough so I can go back to 12 hours.
The light fixture itself is simple enough, 2 plugs in each, one for the white light, and one for the blue and royal blue. I also got a Reef Keeper Lite so not having a timer is not a problem for me. The plugs themselves are the same connection as a Computer power supply, so replacement of the cords, or even getting a longer/shorter one is very simple. Each fixture comes with 4 hanging brackets on the top of the fixture, and 4 cables to hang it. I didn't go that route myself, rather I just built a platform for them to rest on, which I'll show in my pictures.
I had to put my canopy back on, so there for had to mount my Sea-Swirls on the inside corner instead of over the edge. Add to the fact my overflow takes up the back 6 inches of my 18 inch tank. But the lights are low profile enough I was able to provide light to the entire tank with very little noticeable dark areas.
The lights put of negligible heat. My tank is smaller, only at 75g, but there is no temperature change between night and when the lights are all on. Each fixture has 3 fans blowing straight up. My canopy has 2 fans on the top, one blowing down, one up. I do have decent flow rate, ~30 times, so not sure if a tank with less flow would notice any difference. I will say touching the light after its been on a while isn't bad. The bottom where the light comes out gets a little warm, but the rest remains cool enough to handle.
I believe they are decent quality. I was actually clumsy enough to drop one from 4 feet high onto my hardwood floor. Everything still works as it should.
I have never owned MH lights, but after reading all the cons about them, I would never go MH, but would stick with these LED's, providing time convinces me they are viable for reef inhabitants to grow under. The ones I have are supposed to be equivalent to a strong 250w MH, so a deeper tank may run into some issues. These fixtures have 3w LED's under run to 2w each, or something like that, so there may be capability to clock these up to full and get more penetration.
Too early to gauge an opinion, other than they are pretty. My digital camera decided it want to die today, so I'm charging up my Video camera (it can take still shots). They won't be as good quality, but should be good enough to have a look. I'll get some pictures up today for you.
My specs:
75g tank
38g sump
2 clowns
1 yellow tang
1 strawberry goby
1 blue spotted goby
1 blue yellow tailed damsel
1 torch
1 frogspawn
many more corals to come once I am comfortable with what I have.
My thoughts so far. The light is a lot more intense than what I had before. My frogspawn is loving it, but I had to move my torch to the bottom of the tank, and reduce the lighting to 10 hours. It still hasn't expanded out like it used to, but color and consistency tell me its still healthy, just really closed up. I did a light acclimation, starting out with 4 hour white, 6 hour all, and worked up over the course of 2 weeks to 10 white, 12 all. Most of my rock has bleached, so I probably didn't acclimate gradually enough, which may explain my torch being so ticked off at me. I'm hoping with time the torch will acclimate enough so I can go back to 12 hours.
The light fixture itself is simple enough, 2 plugs in each, one for the white light, and one for the blue and royal blue. I also got a Reef Keeper Lite so not having a timer is not a problem for me. The plugs themselves are the same connection as a Computer power supply, so replacement of the cords, or even getting a longer/shorter one is very simple. Each fixture comes with 4 hanging brackets on the top of the fixture, and 4 cables to hang it. I didn't go that route myself, rather I just built a platform for them to rest on, which I'll show in my pictures.
I had to put my canopy back on, so there for had to mount my Sea-Swirls on the inside corner instead of over the edge. Add to the fact my overflow takes up the back 6 inches of my 18 inch tank. But the lights are low profile enough I was able to provide light to the entire tank with very little noticeable dark areas.
The lights put of negligible heat. My tank is smaller, only at 75g, but there is no temperature change between night and when the lights are all on. Each fixture has 3 fans blowing straight up. My canopy has 2 fans on the top, one blowing down, one up. I do have decent flow rate, ~30 times, so not sure if a tank with less flow would notice any difference. I will say touching the light after its been on a while isn't bad. The bottom where the light comes out gets a little warm, but the rest remains cool enough to handle.
I believe they are decent quality. I was actually clumsy enough to drop one from 4 feet high onto my hardwood floor. Everything still works as it should.
I have never owned MH lights, but after reading all the cons about them, I would never go MH, but would stick with these LED's, providing time convinces me they are viable for reef inhabitants to grow under. The ones I have are supposed to be equivalent to a strong 250w MH, so a deeper tank may run into some issues. These fixtures have 3w LED's under run to 2w each, or something like that, so there may be capability to clock these up to full and get more penetration.
.
