Pat24601
Well-Known Member
I thought I would post a current review of Steve’s LEDs for the Red Sea C-250 upgrade since my last review is about 2 years old and a lot has changed since then. Also, to give an idea how Steve’s LEDs worked for me over those 2 years.
First of all, I’d like to mention that about 2 years ago I upgraded my Red Sea C-250 to Steve’s LEDs 14,000k full spectrum. The LEDs worked fantastic for me! I had amazing coral growth from all of my mixed tank corals, which included soft corals, LPS, and SPS. I really enjoyed the sunset and sunrise features as well as the ability to set the intensity for the different channels to whatever seemed to work best from an aesthetic and growth perspective. The install took me a decent chunk of time, but that was more because I was trying to be super careful than because it was hard per se.
For reasons I will leave to my tank blog, I recently decided to convert my Red Sea C-250 to a freshwater tank. I’ve really always liked freshwater and I also really like the C-250 with its covered hood. The primary obstacle I was running into with this conversion was what to do about my lights. I didn’t want to run 14,000k saltwater lights on what probably should be more like a 6,500k freshwater tank.
After speaking with Jeff at Steve’s LEDs, he discussed going with a freshwater conversion for the standard C-250 upgrade fixture with custom LEDs that can be adjusted to anywhere from 4,000k – 10,000k. So, I did that.
After installing the new LEDs, I thought I’d post and say that I loved Steve’s LEDs retrofit before and I love them even more now.
The new fixture they developed to make this a “drop in” install and the video gifs that show each step really takes the all the potentially confusing points out of the install. No more drilling or even needing to know what a DIP switch is. It’s all done for you. Just drop the fixture in, tighten 5 screws, plug the light into the power and into the controller and you are good to go!
This new fixture just makes the whole process so easy. Really, the only part that takes any real amount of time is just opening the hood, which just involves removing screw caps and unscrewing screws, and removing the old electronics. But, since you are replacing ALL of the old electronics with a the new fixture, there really isn’t anything to “screw up” and that takes basically all of the “stress” of the install out of the process---at least for me.
Finally, I went with the mini Bluefish controller this time and I love it!!! It’s even easier to configure the lights than it was with the typhoon controller by just tapping around on an intuitive app on your phone. Plus, you get a bunch of features that aren’t on the typhoon like storms and mimicking real world locations. I’m not sure how much I’ll really use all of these features yet, but they are fun and more importantly, easy!
In summary, the new fixture that Steve’s LEDs constructed makes the install extremely easy taking away basically all of the potentially confusing points of the old install process. The Bluefish controller makes setting the lights up the way you want equally easy, with a lot more options than before. I know from using the lights on 2 years on my saltwater tank that they worked great, so I was already convinced of the quality.
First of all, I’d like to mention that about 2 years ago I upgraded my Red Sea C-250 to Steve’s LEDs 14,000k full spectrum. The LEDs worked fantastic for me! I had amazing coral growth from all of my mixed tank corals, which included soft corals, LPS, and SPS. I really enjoyed the sunset and sunrise features as well as the ability to set the intensity for the different channels to whatever seemed to work best from an aesthetic and growth perspective. The install took me a decent chunk of time, but that was more because I was trying to be super careful than because it was hard per se.
For reasons I will leave to my tank blog, I recently decided to convert my Red Sea C-250 to a freshwater tank. I’ve really always liked freshwater and I also really like the C-250 with its covered hood. The primary obstacle I was running into with this conversion was what to do about my lights. I didn’t want to run 14,000k saltwater lights on what probably should be more like a 6,500k freshwater tank.
After speaking with Jeff at Steve’s LEDs, he discussed going with a freshwater conversion for the standard C-250 upgrade fixture with custom LEDs that can be adjusted to anywhere from 4,000k – 10,000k. So, I did that.
After installing the new LEDs, I thought I’d post and say that I loved Steve’s LEDs retrofit before and I love them even more now.
The new fixture they developed to make this a “drop in” install and the video gifs that show each step really takes the all the potentially confusing points out of the install. No more drilling or even needing to know what a DIP switch is. It’s all done for you. Just drop the fixture in, tighten 5 screws, plug the light into the power and into the controller and you are good to go!
This new fixture just makes the whole process so easy. Really, the only part that takes any real amount of time is just opening the hood, which just involves removing screw caps and unscrewing screws, and removing the old electronics. But, since you are replacing ALL of the old electronics with a the new fixture, there really isn’t anything to “screw up” and that takes basically all of the “stress” of the install out of the process---at least for me.
Finally, I went with the mini Bluefish controller this time and I love it!!! It’s even easier to configure the lights than it was with the typhoon controller by just tapping around on an intuitive app on your phone. Plus, you get a bunch of features that aren’t on the typhoon like storms and mimicking real world locations. I’m not sure how much I’ll really use all of these features yet, but they are fun and more importantly, easy!
In summary, the new fixture that Steve’s LEDs constructed makes the install extremely easy taking away basically all of the potentially confusing points of the old install process. The Bluefish controller makes setting the lights up the way you want equally easy, with a lot more options than before. I know from using the lights on 2 years on my saltwater tank that they worked great, so I was already convinced of the quality.
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to RS ! Start a tank thread and share your tank and new leds with us !