Aqueon modular LED light?

Do you want plants? The aqueon modular only includes a single strip of LED's additionals are $50ea. So no plants unless you add atleast 2 more strips even then it'd still be low light plants. Even with no plants, I'd say its likely you'd want to add another strip in it because of the height on a 75g.

I have the ecoxotics doubt the dimmer would be able to plug into the aqueon. You should be able to do DIY fixture yourself with a dimmer for $150ish.

I had a single ho t5 bulb over my 60 gallon tank when I happened to see this at my lfs. Price was right, I was curious so I bought it with a white and a color max strip. The unit looks nice enough but it's made of cheap plastic. I removed the t5 and put this over my tank and turned it on....wow. The difference between LED and florescent is amazing. So I had no idea how much LED lighting I was going to need to keep my plants happy. Mind you, they were growing very well with the t5. In about a weeks time my plants were showing signs of trouble. Everything started going brown. That's 21 watts of light at, supposedly, 10000k. So before I had to deal with cabbage soup, I added the t5 back into the equation and within a few days everything started to recover.

The fixture looks nice and the moon LEDs look great at night. If you just want your tank to look nice, they work well. If you want to grow plants they will need supplemental lighting.

Well I just purchased a 30 inch for my 37 gal with two colormax. So I will be trying it out with the 1 white it comes with and 2 color max in the expansion slots. I have a fully planted low light planted tank and I am looking for a boost over having a single plant spec T8 on this tank. If it works out then I'll go with it for my 46 planted as well.

Anyone else have any experience with it?

Spud I send you a PM, but if you read this first. Did you try it with just the single white light? Or did you try adding 1 or 2 colormax?

Bryk, sorry for the late response. Yeah, I tried it with just the single white LED strip that came with the unit and found it too dim. I have since put in three colormax strips and the result is impressive from an esthetic point of view. All in all, I like it. Looks nice and didn't break the bank. If I were to do it again, however, I think I would go another way. Because of my investment in plants, I still need the t5 running. So the LED set is really just supplemental lighting, still paying the cost to run the t5. I love the way the LEDs look and would probably spend the clams on a really good LED setup instead. What's been your experience with the Aqueon?

I have the 48" unit, and started with one bulb. I had new plants that weren't doing anything at all, and thru this forum quickly realized that my ancient bulb was the culprit....and on the surface liked the idea of LED from energy consumption.

The amount of light output from one white bulb was drastically improved over the previous stuff, though I still doubted it would be a long term benefit to the plants. I bought another white bulb and a colormax bulb to fill the unit and my plants have been doing great (the golden lloydiella still seems a bit stunted comparatively, but I think one of the fish was going after the roots thinking they were blackworms).

Here is the technical info a rep from Aqueon emailed me when I inquired (end of March):

These are actually very new. They have not made it onto our website yet and apparently PetSmart’s either. Check with www.marineandreef.com they have all the sizes and all of the replacement tubes. There are other sites but that one comes to mind right away.
They are 9000K. Two tubes will give you 27 PAR when measured at 12” from the bulbs. If you use all 3 tubes then you will get 41 PAR (at 12” from bulb).

Regards,


Rob Moneyhan
Central Aquatics Tech Lead
Kent Marine, Coralife, Aqueon, Oceanic, Zilla, Super Pet
Phone# 888-255-4527 or 414-423-8544
Fax# 800-398-0396 or 414-421-9682
Email: rmoneyhan@central.com

Hope this helps.