160W LED fixture

[OgreMkV]

I just got home from a business trip and the lights cam in at the same time I was flying out. So here's the first pics. no real review yet except this seems like a solid piece of equipment. There's really no 'cheap

feeling from anything here. I will say that this is G1, not the G2. So I don't have moonlights (no big deal) and there's no separate programing for the pair of 30W LED floods. On the other hands, shipped, this units was less than $500. And a rough time between LED replacement of 24 months is pretty impressive.

The lighting unit is actually much smaller than the 20" PC fixture it will replace and much lighter too. The LEDs are very thin and the rest of the unit is a pair of fans and a HUGE aluminum heat sink. THe powersupply and programmer are a separate unit.

On to the pics

unboxing (mounting rails on top, side attach rails already on unit., hanging gear in bag, power supply on left)

the lights themselves (the big panels are the 2 30W whites, the others are half blues and half whites)

Tank with current 96W PC (dual actinic and 10K) fixture

Tank with LEds (whites and blues)... there is a noticable shimmer in the water column and these pics really do not show the glowing of the corals. Even the mushrooms are glowing (well, some of them).

♠

Tank with just blues

[chrisfowler99]

The color looks awesome in both modes!

[GKarshens]

There is a huge improvement in the color of your tank! I will be interested to see what kind of growth you get from them.

[cmanning]

Very Nice!! Definitely the blue, purple and even the iridescent green hues will pop. I'm with Gabe---would like to know about growth results.

[DaJMasta]

That's a huge amount of LED power!!!! I hope your light cycle isn't too long and you can shade some of your corals because 160W of even fairly low efficiency LEDs is equivalent to hundreds (probably well over 300W) of watts of PC. If you want to grow SPS on the bottom of your tank, you should now be able to.

I've never seen an LED fixture that powerful and those 30W LEDs are insane.

[mikedelgado]

That is awsome! Who is the manufacturer?

[OgreMkV]

This unit is the G1 maxspect 160W. The G1s are basically old models and no longer available, so I got it much cheaper. The G2s have the same wattage, but have three timers (you can fire the twin 30s seperately from the other whites and blues). The G2s also come with 4 1W violet moon lights.

Does anyone have a suggestion for light cycle times? I was thinking of running the blues for 9 hours and the whites for 7 or so and see what happens. I am very nervous about killing off the lower light corals. I can't move many of them because they are pretty well attached.

Thanks for the help.

Kev

[Brooks]

I didn't realize how powerful LEDs were. I really want to add an Actinic spectrum to my tank, and LEDs only look better and better.

[mikedelgado]

I would start with the light pretty high up and just keep an eye on your corals. You might even want to run it for 5hrs or less the 1st few weeks.

[Crab Rangoon]

Does anyone have a suggestion for light cycle times? I was thinking of running the blues for 9 hours and the whites for 7 or so and see what happens.

Kevin, are these dimmable via programming, or only from manual input via the controls on the power source? If you can have them swell/ramp up with timing, then I would have a different suggestion from just plain "off & on" time suggestions. Assuming it's just off or on, I'd go with 7hrs white and 8-9hrs blue to begin with, you can always adjust it later. You want to make sure that you mimic pretty darn near whatever photo period of each light type you were already using with the PC's, though, to begin. Once the corals have adjusted to the same light period with the new light over the course of 4-6 days, then I would suggest altering your exposure times.

Also, I wouldn't really worry about the corals not doing so well from the new light - it really does put out a lot more light and provide a much better spread (with no hot-spots, to boot) than the PC's originally did. You definitely want to be weary of immediately providing longer periods of light with the new brighter unit, or else you might stress the corals out and lose color for a bit. Once they've all adjusted, and you've sorted out your photo periods, I'm sure everything will be fine AND looking/growing improved

[OgreMkV]

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 a 30W 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 timee 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.