Cali Kid Corals

AP700 or Radion Pro

Mike's Reef

Mike's Reef

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As i was surfing on the web about what spectrum i put my two AP700 on. I saw this two reefer debating on how controllable and user friendly between AP700 and Radion Pro. So do you have any of these premium lights and hows your experience with them?


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Either are great lights.

And honestly, once you set the schedule, you wouldn’t/shouldn’t be really fiddling with it all that often.

The beauty of the Kessils is that all you really need to decide is how white do you want your lights.


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+1 to Vincent's comment, both are great lights more than capable of growing things beyond by skill level, and really shouldn't require much tweaking.
From a user ease perspective you're really comparing the Ecosmart Live interface to the Kessil interface. All of the Radions (at least Gen3 standard and up that I've used) have pretty much identical interfaces.

Once used to it controlling a Radion through a Reeflink is just fine, as is controlling an AP700 through a phone. Setting up a Radion via the USB cable is a bit of a pain, but isn't so bad if you only have one tank to manage. I don't have any experience using a WXM.

I made my choice based on how the light output looks in the tank, but that is also a minor consideration. If I had one I wouldn't go through the cost/hassle of switching to the other.

I'm a Gen4Pro Radion user, but have maintained tanks with AP700s as well, and know plenty of happy users of both.
 
Aquaillumination.com has a light sciences section to compare Kessil vs. Ecotech vs. AI.

Here is a screenshot of AP700 vs. Radion XR30 gen4 pro

Screen Shot 2019-05-04 at 11.07.40 AM.png
 
Vhuang168 said:
The AP700 is so much more even than the Radion from that comparison.


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Click to expand...

Honestly, not sure if you are joking or not here. The Kessil has peak PAR that's about a third less than the Ecotech. The average PAR for the Kessil is almost half of the Ecotech. The Kessill uses almost the same amount of power to produce way less light. I guess it is pretty even, but it's evenly dark.
 
bluprntguy said:
Honestly, not sure if you are joking or not here. The Kessil has peak PAR that's about a third less than the Ecotech. The average PAR for the Kessil is almost half of the Ecotech. The Kessill uses almost the same amount of power to produce way less light. I guess it is pretty even, but it's evenly dark.
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I would take even lighting over one that puts a hot spot right in the middle. The only reason I don’t use T5 is because it doesn’t have any shimmer. Evenly distributed light has less shadowing and greater coverage. If it isn’t enough par then you add more lights. It’s hard to say that an AP700 doesn’t provide enough par though. The test was done at 24” from the light and still put out 183 par.
 
The Kessils do not register well on par meters due to having most of their LEDs in the deeper blue/UV spectrum.

PAR is not the end all that you have to take into account when comparing lights. If so, halides will win every single time and if having the most PAR is the key to success, we would all be still running halides.

Stories abound in the internet of people burning corals with Kessils because they look dimmer than other leds so people crank them to full.





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Flagg37 said:
I would take even lighting over one that puts a hot spot right in the middle. The only reason I don’t use T5 is because it doesn’t have any shimmer. Evenly distributed light has less shadowing and greater coverage. If it isn’t enough par then you add more lights. It’s hard to say that an AP700 doesn’t provide enough par though. The test was done at 24” from the light and still put out 183 par.
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Shadowing is caused by single point light sources. Metal halides don't have shadowing issues because there are usually a number of bulbs spread evenly across the tank, which reduces shadowing. People do similar things with LED light strips to avoid the shadowing issue inherent with most LED fixtures. With these types of LED fixtures like the Kessils and Ecotech's that have all the light source clustered together, you are more likely to have shadowing regardless of how "even" the light is.

Vhuang168 said:
The Kessils do not register well on par meters due to having most of their LEDs in the deeper blue/UV spectrum.
PAR is not the end all that you have to take into account when comparing lights. If so, halides will win every single time and if having the most PAR is the key to success, we would all be still running halides.

Stories abound in the internet of people burning corals with Kessils because they look dimmer than other leds so people crank them to full.
Click to expand...

Totally agree that kessils generally look dark, but without spending time overlaying the spectrum of the Ecotechs vs. Kessil, they look pretty similar. I don't think wavelength differences would explain the drastic PAR difference in this case. More likely differences in the optics.
 
I'll go for the Radion G4 for acropora tanks and AP700 for mix reef and zoas. Check out utube for what WWC, and Unique corals are using on top of all their coral tanks. They have tons of money invested on lights. My 2 cents worth.
 
1) If the Kessils handle read less PAR is this because the PAR meters are off at that end (in which case Kessil should test everyone with a better meter), or are the boundary lines of the already inexact PAR too narrow for the light our coral uses?

2) While I'd guess it's more even, it is hard to tell from that chart as the maximums are different. I'd rather see it with either the Radion turned down to have the same max as the AP700, or normalize the data.

3) Lack of shimmer may overlap with even distribution, but the two are not 1:1. A wide reflector on a halide does a decent job of evening things out while minimizing overspray, yet still has decent shimmer.

4) I'm not sure PAR differences drove out halides so much as operating cost and the inability to dim. When I let up my reef I looked at going the halide route. I could get over the price of the fixtures, but then having to buy $80 bulbs (Radium 20k) every 8 months. Then I would have had to add blue LED strips which would have put the start-up price about the same as just going full LEDs to begin with, and I would have had to adjust height to dim. Being in TX at the time I would have had to also increase chilling capacity, and then pay a second time as my house AC exported the heat.
 
Along these same lines (although we're now well off topic from the OP), it would be interesting a measure of how much over-spray lights produce in to the front face of the tank and into the surrounding room. Whenever my large tank moves the lights will be reinstalled with a slight backward tilt (and shift forward) to cut down on the light hitting the front glass. I did this in one area and it significantly cut down on nuisance algae on the front glass.
 
I bought an AP700 recently and so far I’m really happy with it. Very easy to set up, nice software and very powerful.


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Radions have green leds in them, and I dont believe Kessils do, our eyes are more sensitive to that part of the spectrum which is why green looks bright and vibrant but violet looks dark. So the excess green will make the overall light look brighter and possibly register more on a PAR meter.
 
For me, the first thing that got me hooked to kessil is the unrivaled shimmer that the lights produces. Ive had 4 Ai prime and Hyra 26 and ive also had current marine pro and marshaqua. Non of them gave the shimmer that made me switched to kessil. Everytime i look at my tanks. No matter how depressed and stressed i get. It just makes me feel that everything is gonna be alright that the ocean will somehow take those bad feelings away.


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For me radion i have seen better growth
Both will do the job but i personally think radion is a bit better

I would also get separate pucks like the 15 so you can space it properly
 
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