anathema
Guest
Thought this might be of interest to some of you, I have a set of T5 lights from this company and I have been very happy with them. They recently said on their site that they are developing an LED light, and the first ones arrived last week. I decided to go check them out, because they looked interesting, and here's what I saw.
It's a 79W fixture with 2 20W 14K multichip LED's and 13 3W blue supplemental emitters. The guy's name is Simon, and he compares it to a 150W MH fixture that they sell. From looking at it in person, I think it is easily as bright as the 150W MH, and it has the bonus of separate actinics, and all the other LED stuff everyone talks about. He had a lux meter there, and at 1 foot we got a reading of 1358. I'm not familiar with metering light so I'm not sure if that's good, but it's a bright light.
In person, I think it looks a bit less blue than a 20K radium did when I ran one. He had a tank running this light there, so I took a few shots. The blue is decent, honestly not the best I've seen, I think the color from a blue reefbrite was nicer. It did fluoresce the corals though, and with everything on the color was quite nice.
I ended up spending several hours chatting with him and checking the light out over his tank, taking it partially apart, and discussing the issues he faces designing his own lighting. I've always been impressed with his ideas and the way he approaches designing lights for aquariums. Everything is replaceable, and his older MH+T5 designs are all modular, which means you can upgrade your tank and not have to redo your entire lighting setup. We also discussed that he was working to make a T5 light that would attach to this and be modular in the same way as the old setup. As of now, this doesn't easily work with the older designs.
Since I've never had a problem with my T5's, I haven't had to test out his warranty service. However, he offers a year warranty with continued support after that, which I find nice. I like that he's a hobbyist too, and his design ideas reflect that in ways that a lot of other companies don't.
I have no idea on the specs of the power supplies used, and I'm not personally too familiar with LED tech, so I'm not sure that would help anyways. I do know everything in this fixture is Chinese, and it is assembled in China. We talked a bit about his issues finding good quality components and he seems to have put a lot of effort into finding components that will last.
Overall, I think this is a very cool light, a mixture of the "cannon" idea with a bit more spread. I took off the lens and ran the light without the optics that it comes with and it looked like it got more spread that way. He stated it's about 120 degrees without the optic on, and the optic narrows it down to 70 degrees.
Unfortunately for me, my tank is 36" and one of these alone would put me right back where I started. I'd have to get two, or supplement with T5's. I'm still debating whether I could make this setup work without having to buy two of them.
In any case, I hope this was interesting for someone.
It's a 79W fixture with 2 20W 14K multichip LED's and 13 3W blue supplemental emitters. The guy's name is Simon, and he compares it to a 150W MH fixture that they sell. From looking at it in person, I think it is easily as bright as the 150W MH, and it has the bonus of separate actinics, and all the other LED stuff everyone talks about. He had a lux meter there, and at 1 foot we got a reading of 1358. I'm not familiar with metering light so I'm not sure if that's good, but it's a bright light.
In person, I think it looks a bit less blue than a 20K radium did when I ran one. He had a tank running this light there, so I took a few shots. The blue is decent, honestly not the best I've seen, I think the color from a blue reefbrite was nicer. It did fluoresce the corals though, and with everything on the color was quite nice.
I ended up spending several hours chatting with him and checking the light out over his tank, taking it partially apart, and discussing the issues he faces designing his own lighting. I've always been impressed with his ideas and the way he approaches designing lights for aquariums. Everything is replaceable, and his older MH+T5 designs are all modular, which means you can upgrade your tank and not have to redo your entire lighting setup. We also discussed that he was working to make a T5 light that would attach to this and be modular in the same way as the old setup. As of now, this doesn't easily work with the older designs.
Since I've never had a problem with my T5's, I haven't had to test out his warranty service. However, he offers a year warranty with continued support after that, which I find nice. I like that he's a hobbyist too, and his design ideas reflect that in ways that a lot of other companies don't.
I have no idea on the specs of the power supplies used, and I'm not personally too familiar with LED tech, so I'm not sure that would help anyways. I do know everything in this fixture is Chinese, and it is assembled in China. We talked a bit about his issues finding good quality components and he seems to have put a lot of effort into finding components that will last.
Overall, I think this is a very cool light, a mixture of the "cannon" idea with a bit more spread. I took off the lens and ran the light without the optics that it comes with and it looked like it got more spread that way. He stated it's about 120 degrees without the optic on, and the optic narrows it down to 70 degrees.
Unfortunately for me, my tank is 36" and one of these alone would put me right back where I started. I'd have to get two, or supplement with T5's. I'm still debating whether I could make this setup work without having to buy two of them.
In any case, I hope this was interesting for someone.
