The red sea LED 90 arrived finally! Yes, and that means we can buy corals!
So initial impression of the red sea 90 LED lights.
Fully red sea quality, yes!
The mounting arm is very high quality and easy to assemble.
The LED assembly is the same. I feel like for the price it is a very good value.
Unboxing experience is also good.
OK for the setup. Seriously easiest Wifi connection and setup ever. They kind of killed it in that regard.
The app looks and works great and is easy to use.
I got my corals and lights at the exact same time and had to drive 1.5 hrs to get home. So I wanted lights up asap. I was able to do the whole thing and get the initial program running before my corals drip acclimated.
I'll write more on this topic later but I see some real benefits with these lights. They don't allow extreme tweaking of spectrum. They do have the following.
Tuned spectrum per red sea research. Control of blue and white channel.
Separate led for moon lighting.
Pre-made programs and custom programming for your own tweaks.
Acclimation mode, yes! I set mine to start at 60% of program intensity and acclimate over 40 days.
Cloud modes can be mixed into program.
Moonlight modes track actual moon cycle.
Good optics (Lens) for mixing of light.
Lens means that there is no weird reflections of individual leds on water surface.
Now temper this with the fact that I am new and don't know ****.
Red Sea LED 90
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Ron Reefman
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All that is great and I'm glad you are happy with it. But for me the real test is the PAR at 20" to 24" deep in the tank.
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Yeah for sure. I do not yet own a par meter so I cannot report on that. I got this from my local red sea rep, he said that he did use his par meter and was surprised at having very good numbers.
If you believe red sea's own testing the numbers are here.
https://www.redseafish.com/hardware/reefled/
If you believe red sea's own testing the numbers are here.
https://www.redseafish.com/hardware/reefled/
Ron Reefman
Lets Go Snorkeling!
Reef Squad
Excellence Award
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Article Contributor
Tampa Bay Reef Keepers
MAC of SW Florida
If their numbers are honest, and I think Red Sea is fairly trust worthy, those are pretty good numbers.
King Turkey
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I know this is old but I also have a red sea and started a Acropora under it. how is your sps doing under it? update?
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Hi doing pretty well, im running all blue no white. However for sps dominant tank i think need more par and more coverage to be able to grow sps in more places in the tank, so i am adding a giesmann fixture above with 4 t5 lights. On vacation with spotty internet so can give more details when get back in week. Ill also be updating my build thread.
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@crabcore
Hi so to followup on this...here is my 3 month opinion on the Red Sea LED 90 for a Reefer 170
Pros:
- Visually appealing and fits red sea tank geometry with mounts out of box
- Quality and packaging and documentation are excellent
- Easy setup
- Great app for controlling lights
- Preset channels (Pro for me but others may want more spectrum control)
- Single lens eliminates disco ball effect
- PAR Output and spread are good for a 90w light
- PAR seems ideal for LPS or Medium Light SPS with ability to place some high light SPS at top in 250-300 zone.
Cons:
- Single point source of light so shading is pronounced with single light setup. With larger tank and multiple lights, the single point source issue is less and also you can add more to bump up PAR.
- PAR (Single light on Reefer 170) is not quite sufficient IMO for SPS dominant tank where you want acropora in top 2/3rds of tank and out to edges.
- Powerbrick gets crazy hot esp when lights are at 100%
Solutions if you want an SPS dominant tank or better spread.
- You could try 2x LED 90s or 2x LED 50s for better spread but the problem is the mounting options with the arms don't allow ideal placement. Seems a single high watt radion or similar would be better.
- Go Hydrid and add T5s to the LED90. So this is what I did and it gets me to where I want to be. I used a Geissmann Infinity without using the Halide center bulb which gets me 4x T5 lights and that completely solves my shading issues and coverage and PAR in the 170. Expensive but I got this one open box for half off. Because of how well the T5s spread, having the LED 90 shade the T5s doesn't really have any negative effects that I can measure. It actually helps reduce the hot spot directly under the LED.
My tank is not yet 4 months old, so its still all frags. My Build thread has more details, Thx.
Hi so to followup on this...here is my 3 month opinion on the Red Sea LED 90 for a Reefer 170
Pros:
- Visually appealing and fits red sea tank geometry with mounts out of box
- Quality and packaging and documentation are excellent
- Easy setup
- Great app for controlling lights
- Preset channels (Pro for me but others may want more spectrum control)
- Single lens eliminates disco ball effect
- PAR Output and spread are good for a 90w light
- PAR seems ideal for LPS or Medium Light SPS with ability to place some high light SPS at top in 250-300 zone.
Cons:
- Single point source of light so shading is pronounced with single light setup. With larger tank and multiple lights, the single point source issue is less and also you can add more to bump up PAR.
- PAR (Single light on Reefer 170) is not quite sufficient IMO for SPS dominant tank where you want acropora in top 2/3rds of tank and out to edges.
- Powerbrick gets crazy hot esp when lights are at 100%
Solutions if you want an SPS dominant tank or better spread.
- You could try 2x LED 90s or 2x LED 50s for better spread but the problem is the mounting options with the arms don't allow ideal placement. Seems a single high watt radion or similar would be better.
- Go Hydrid and add T5s to the LED90. So this is what I did and it gets me to where I want to be. I used a Geissmann Infinity without using the Halide center bulb which gets me 4x T5 lights and that completely solves my shading issues and coverage and PAR in the 170. Expensive but I got this one open box for half off. Because of how well the T5s spread, having the LED 90 shade the T5s doesn't really have any negative effects that I can measure. It actually helps reduce the hot spot directly under the LED.
My tank is not yet 4 months old, so its still all frags. My Build thread has more details, Thx.
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King Turkey
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nice! I have a acro now and some more lps corals so far everything seems to do good in my 40g breeder tank. I had to mode the breeder to get the arm to fit on the rimmed tank I have. slower growth on the acro using only the reef led 90 but I do not know my corals are also new/ frags.
King Turkey
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hear are my corals under the led reef 90. the acro is rely tinny cant see in the left top rock
Cwentz758
Do you even Reef bro?
mine Sit down on my plastic rim just fine. They don’t go down all the way as I’d like but they are sturdy and I have no worry they’ll fall. Other question do the 90 mounts have a plastic block in the back where you tighten it down on the tank?
