Aqueon modular LED light?

I've seen pictures of tanks using these lights and they seem so much brighter than the ones I have over my tank. The lighting with just the Aqueon LEDs is just dim compared to those tanks, very pretty but still dim. Maybe my eyes are just used to a nice bright tank, not staring at the sun bright but sunnyish. I've read some reviews that said when the Colormax bulbs were added, the colors of their fish 'popped'. I don't see that. It never occurred to me that I might have a bad unit. Look at the pictures and give me your opinions. Crappy cell phone pictures. I'll get my DSLR out and take better shots later. BTW, the water in my tank isn't cloudy, it's my weak azz cell phone camera making me look like a chump!

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Here we go. 48 inch Aqueon with three LED strips. In my opinion, still too dim.

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The lighting from the LEDs seems more crisp, but less bright. I have a 2 bulb T5HO fixture, and while I only run one bulb most days (alternating between the Florasun for plant growth and Ultrasun for brightness), I find that the overall colors are much better under the Florasun. I'm guessing Florasun is just Zoomed's version of Colormax. I'm eventually going to go for one of those freshwater plant growth high end LED fixtures in the next year or so.
 
Keep in mind that LED lighting is very different in appearance than fluorescent lighting. LED lighting is more focused and throws light pretty much straight down while fluoresent throws light in all directions. If you are comparing it to fluorescent lighting even high end LED lit tanks will look dimmer. Because not as much light is being sent out of the tank directly from the fluorescent lamp.

A good demonstration is to put both types of lights over a bare tank and look at the light on the floor around the outside of the tank. You will see a lot more light spillage from the fluorescent lights than the LED. This has nothing to do with the brightness of the light but the angle of dispersion. This makes the fluorescents look brighter.

Andy
 
I wasn't really talking about the difference between fluorescent and LED. I think that the difference in light dispersion is obvious to anyone who looks at the two different lighting systems. What I was trying to say, probably badly, is that pictures that I have seen with the Aqueon LED system seem, at least to me, much brighter than the same Aqueon LED system that I have over my tank. So the question that I was attempting to ask is, does anyone else who owns it think that the light given off is dimmer than it should be. I find that this LED system with three light strips is still uncomfortable to look at because it doesn't put enough light on the display. Watching the Kings and Sharks while typing, hope it makes sense! GO KINGS GO!
 
Love my stunner strips have them across my whole store fresh and salt water sections plus you can double them up if you ever want to do plants
1 48" unit will light the tank very well but not so much to cause algae mount is 6-8" over the tank and that should do the job


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Mine replaced an old, single, t12 40W bulb so to me its a lot brighter :). Now, I will say that there probably is something to be said for the dispersion and I will also mention that I'm having a hard time taking pictures of the fish with a DSLR and it is light related. I can take them with my P & S camera but its hard to get one in focus, so I borrowed the DSLR with better macro settings and even though I can usually get the fish in the finder on high zoom, it won't auto-focus/snap the pic, no matter which setting I've tried so far. Still experimenting and researching online for work-arounds. Plant growth is noticeably better, even in plants on the foreground side when the light is going through the plastic near the middle/back end.
 
Your tank is absolutely stunning! I can only imagine how much hard work (not to mention research) it took to get it to this point.

I know what you mean about photographs embellishing their ability to illuminate a tank, but I never take the stock photos provided by the manufacturer to accurately portray the results you can expect for yourself when you bring the unit home. If I'm not mistaken, the Aqueon LED fixture is a lot cheaper than the Marineland double bright (which is the one that is recommended for aquatic plants) and I imagine it is more like what you really want. However one big appeal is that the color spectrum is adjustable and interchangeable with the Aqueon fixture, since those bars come in spectrums similar to fluorescent bulbs. I haven't seen a Colormax type spectrum (with the more reddish/pinkish hues) available on any of the Marineland fixtures.

Personally, for a 48" tank, I would be very tempted to just use two 20" incandescent strip lights: http://www.petco.com/product/7395/Aqueon-Incandescent-Strip-Lights.aspx
With 23 watt daylight bulbs.

This would definitely be the cheapest way to go, but if you were worried about heat output and power consumption, LED bulbs such as these could work: http://www.homedepot.com/p/t/203991776

They are even dimmable - I think it would be fairly easy to install a dimmer on each strip. Moonlights are nice (and actually, blue LED light bars can be had very cheaply on eBay from China, they work quite well in my experience) but dimmers achieve about the same purpose - winding down, getting ready for bed.
 
I actually have a single bulb hot5 that I combine with the LEDs. Color is so much better and more vivid with it. Look at the difference!

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BTW. KINGS WIN! Off to the conference finals! GO KINGS GO!
 
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