new reef brite strip - review

[nunlef]

Happy mother's day to me
Happy mother's day to me
I must've been a good mommy
cause I got a reef brite LED

That's alittle tune I wrote last sunday while putting my fancy new light on the tank. It's a 48" white ReedBrite LED strip I bought online at Premium Aquatics.

My tank is 48"x24"x24", typically, one would install 3-5 of these units to be fully LED. I plan on 3-4 and will place corals with care.

this is a single LED strip at 50% power, they aren't dimmable, but do have an adjustable power supply - don't ask me what the difference is.

this is the same strip at 100% - no other lighting, and the room was "daylight dim" - ie, bright out, but I had the blinds closed.

this is a profile so you can see the spread. It's clearly defined, even easier to see in real life.

and yes, the glass is always that dirty - I have 3 little kids, and they put their paws all over it.

It's been on a week, and I'm really looking foward to getting 2 more soon. I will replace my odyssea 4x54 T5 with 2 units, and then add a 4th LED strip down the road. I picked up a montipora digita from Blue Zoo Aquatics about 2 weeks ago, and I guess it's doing OK under the reef brite strip. My frogspawn and star polyps are definitely looking better, the mushroom and zoa couldn't care less.

well, that's it, I hope you enjoy my sub-par photogaphy skills and dirty tank

 

[deehz]

Love the jingle!

Wow, with full power, it seems that you can install just about any coral in your tank with your new toy, the LED. I am looking into some strips for my current RSM from Ecoexotic. There price is right for the LED strips that they offer w/PAR information. I was going to see how the corals do first in my small tank before going full 100% w/LED's on my bigger tank. Hopefully, once I purchase my LED's, the price will be going down since there are allot of vendors coming online with new products. Keep us posted!

Thanks!

 

[nunlef]

Love the jingle!

Wow, with full power, it seems that you can install just about any coral in your tank with your new toy, the LED. I am looking into some strips for my current RSM from Ecoexotic. There price is right for the LED strips that they offer w/PAR information. I was going to see how the corals do first in my small tank before going full 100% w/LED's on my bigger tank. Hopefully, once I purchase my LED's, the price will be going down since there are allot of vendors coming online with new products. Keep us posted!

Thanks!

i originally wanted the panorama fixture by ecoxotic, but the reef brites fit my needs a little better, and i think they use a higher watt LED. a lfs near me has a panorama on display in a tank about 18"cubed, and it is supporting sps,lps, and softs.
I liked these because i can add as funds allow, the panorama on anything over 30" needs to be done all at once.
anyway, even at 10 hrs on, you can touch any part of the strip and it's just toasty warm. VERY different from the T5's i'm currently using

 

[deehz]

That is the single number one reason I want to go with LED's, is the heat t5's and MH put out. I can't afford a chiller yet, so I have to look into alternatives for the tank that is a very sloooowww build. LOL.

I saw the Panorama by Ecoexotic. I was impressed w/its flexibility but that is about it. It doesn't come with a timer or are dimmable where the others at the same price range do come with more bells and whistles. Anyways, keep us posted since many want to see what a LED system can do in a reef tank. Thanks!

 

[nunlef]

I'm in love with the reef brite strip, so I'm updating my review.

2 bulbs in my T5 fixture went out last week. I'm not replacing them because I will be adding another LED strip in 2 weeks.

My tank is new-ish. Nitrates run a little higher than they should, but Am and nitrite have been 0 for several months. salinity swings are my big deal, i forget to top-off at times. I also overfeed, and my lights are not on a timer so the schedule changes a little each day.

The point of all that is to explain the effective quality of these strips. The montipora digitata that I bought had lost a little color in the first couple of days. I had it for about 5 days before I added the strip. I have been running the strip for 10 h/d for just over 2 weeks (except one day I forgot to turn the lights on), and it is growing. I do not feed corals, they just get whatever is floating around.

I have a couple other low light corals in may tank, and after a couple months, they are looking healthier and growing better after the addition of the LEDs. Someone with a quality T5 might not notice the same improvements as me.