160 W LEDs
- Thread starter OgreMkV
- Start date
Wow. These lights are great... not sure if it's the power, the color spectrum, the intensity, or what, but the corals are obviously much happier. My Armor-of God zoas have fully opened for the first time in months. The Eye-of-Ra zoas are doing the same.
I accidentally hit the leather with the beam from a 30W flood and it sucked in super fast. I moved the lights and it's already back up.
The LEDs are not actually dimmable. The programming is based on the time and their are three choices (all off, blues on, whites on). Right now, my PCs were running from 11:00A to 9:30P. The LEDs are set to the following:
blues on at 10:30
whites on at 12:00
whites off at 17:00
blues off at 18:30
That's five hours of white and 8 of blue (420-470nm).
I was thinking about getting a full glass top for the tank, but I'm going to wait as the plastic top that's on now may be helping attenuate the intensity of the LEDs.
I accidentally hit the leather with the beam from a 30W flood and it sucked in super fast. I moved the lights and it's already back up.
The LEDs are not actually dimmable. The programming is based on the time and their are three choices (all off, blues on, whites on). Right now, my PCs were running from 11:00A to 9:30P. The LEDs are set to the following:
blues on at 10:30
whites on at 12:00
whites off at 17:00
blues off at 18:30
That's five hours of white and 8 of blue (420-470nm).
I was thinking about getting a full glass top for the tank, but I'm going to wait as the plastic top that's on now may be helping attenuate the intensity of the LEDs.
I saw your post on these over on RC and came back here to see if you had posted about them. I'm looking at two of the G2 110w fixtures to replace the 2x250w MH setup over my 55. How are you liking them after a month or so of use?
Honestly, I'm having mixed reactions to the LEDs. They are really powerful.
Pros
I like the shimmer effect.
The lights are quite bright (good enough that I no longer have to use the flash to take tank shots with my wife's Canon digital EOS)
For a minimal increase in power (watts used) there's a huge increase in delivered light
My birdsnest coral has increased in size almost 50% in about a month (with five or six new branches starting)
The flourescent effect on the zoas is amazing and beautiful
Cons
The lights give me a headache if I look into the fish tank for too long. This may occur with all really bright lights, I don't know.
The lights are not quite as cool as you may be led to believe, but the fans are really quite (I have melted a bit of plastic with the lights).
Shrooms, some of the zoas, and leathers don't seem to like the really bright light that much. Most of them (that aren't under cover) have shrunk. The leathers are really in a bad position (I'm working on a solution).
The blue lights only is very disconcerting and over the past weeks almost completely gone to all lamps on for 8 hours a day. (I started with blues on for 8 hours and all lamps on for about 6 hours.)
All in all, I'm very pleased with the lights and even added another SPS to my tank.
I'd buy them again for any other reef tank I was thinking about.
Pros
I like the shimmer effect.
The lights are quite bright (good enough that I no longer have to use the flash to take tank shots with my wife's Canon digital EOS)
For a minimal increase in power (watts used) there's a huge increase in delivered light
My birdsnest coral has increased in size almost 50% in about a month (with five or six new branches starting)
The flourescent effect on the zoas is amazing and beautiful
Cons
The lights give me a headache if I look into the fish tank for too long. This may occur with all really bright lights, I don't know.
The lights are not quite as cool as you may be led to believe, but the fans are really quite (I have melted a bit of plastic with the lights).
Shrooms, some of the zoas, and leathers don't seem to like the really bright light that much. Most of them (that aren't under cover) have shrunk. The leathers are really in a bad position (I'm working on a solution).
The blue lights only is very disconcerting and over the past weeks almost completely gone to all lamps on for 8 hours a day. (I started with blues on for 8 hours and all lamps on for about 6 hours.)
All in all, I'm very pleased with the lights and even added another SPS to my tank.
I'd buy them again for any other reef tank I was thinking about.
Awesome, good to know. the brightness I'm not all that concerned about going from 2x250w MH. I'd most likely also be getting the model without the 30w flood so that wouldn't be as big a concern either. Thanks for the update in any case!
