New OceanRevive Arctic T247 Initial review (pic heavy)
 

I received my Arctic T247 about a week ago. As I open the box I feel like a child on Christmas morning. Upon opening the box I notice several things right off the get go. The lights weighed next to nothing. The finish is very nice, almost rubber like, seems it should hold up well over time.

A bit about why I decided to get this light. I have always had metal halide/T5 or metal halide/VHO combo lighting in the past and absolutely loved it. currently I was running 2 250w phoenix halides with 4 54w blue plus T5's over a 72g bow front tank. the color was great for me, great growth of everything in my tank. But I have always wanted to try LED lighting and could never pull the trigger. Have heard too many horror stories over the years and like every one else, I can not afford to lose all my corals.

After lots of reading, lots of questions from various vendors and of course many days of me talking it over with my wife. I talked to Stan over at OceanRevive for awhile, picked his brain as much as I could and determined this was the company I wanted to buy from. The friendly customer service I received was top notch, answered any questions I had, never got short with me even though I know I had to be driving him crazy with all the questions! After awhile I decided that the Arctic T247 was what I wanted to try out.

so back to current day. the light is currently mounted over my tank at about 8" over the water. currently have them set up at 30% ch1 and 20% ch2 trying to acclimate my tank right now. It is very hard to compare light intensity between MH/T5 to LED's. A PAR meter would for sure be helpful with this process. I did how ever try many different settings over my tank just to see how they would look at different settings. The light does put out a lot of light when turned up! This light is a HUGE difference then MH/T5 lights. The look of LED's is a whole different look to me. Pictures could NEVER show the true look of a LED tank.

Arctic T247 LED vs MH/T5

Pro's
1: Absolutely no heat.
2: Energy consumption is a lot less.
3: Cost of replacement bulbs.
4: Ability to change kelvin and intensity on the fly.
5: Not as much spill over light (if that matters to you).
6: Corals POP more under these lights then they do under T5. its a different kind of glow. Again maybe not for every one, but if you like that look this is a pro for sure.
7: Remote control is a cool option to have. Super small and useful for some functions when your sitting on your couch and being lazy.
8: ONLY 1 POWER CORD!

Con's
1: Dark spots. doesn't fill the tank like MH/T5 combo would. More direct lighting, if that makes any sense.
2: The red and green LED's put off a spot light appearance. meaning you can see exactly where they are placed in the fixture, when looking at the tank.
3: Some colors are not as vibrant compared to my MH/T5 combo. Like my yellow polyps are a bit washed out looking. could be the settings, so this might be a premature con.
4: Even though it is cool to have a remote control for these fixtures, the remote does not have the ability to only turn on/off 1 channel at a time. Like turning off the full spectrum portion and only leaving on the blues.


There is more to add to this list, on both sides, But I want to give the light more time for me to make adjustments. see how the corals react over some time. The shimmer effect of LED's looks like I have a disco ball in my living room ( My wife's words). This may be part of adjusting the light, but I can notice the red and green LED's in the shimmer. Might not be for every one, But my wife loves it. I personally think it is a little much as it sits right now.

I plan to add more information to this as time goes on. I wanted to speak my mind on what I felt about this light and my initial impressions. I did take pictures to post up, I did find taking pictures of the LED's over my tank was a bit harder for me to do. So I plan on having a buddy come over with a better camera later on.

First picture is the tank with my MH/T5 lights over it. the rest are with the LED's and some of how I mounted them for right now. might change the mounting later on.

If you have any questions about the light that I didn't speak about, Please ask and I will try to fill in the blanks. Just keep in mind this is a initial thought review and I will be updating it later on.


http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/o...ps3c700ddb.jpg

http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/o...psbdd18957.jpg

http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/o...ps5a43e694.jpg

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http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/o...ps18322dec.jpg

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This is my inital review and it was from about 5 days ago. I will be uping my lights this weekend a bit more, so some things may change and i will keep this updated as time goes on.

As of right now i am getting used to the light and i have yet to see any ill effects from any of my coral. If anything a few of my Zoanthids have opened up a bit more and are more colorful. I am still waiting to see how the rest of the coral colors will turn out once i get the LED intensity turned up some more and get the right spectrum i like from the lights. but this will all take time, dont want to rush things and harm any of my corals.

any questions you have, I will try to answer the best i can. I am trying to give an honest review of these lights and my experience from day one. I was one of the many people who was very nervous to switch and it took a long time to take the plunge.

Can you post a picture of leds from the reflection of the water, that way you can see which color are the leds. I keep thinking that they are just blue and white but I know that is not true.

Moondoggy,

Here you go, this is my S026 which is the same as the T247 just without the controller.

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3699/1...dee6b786_b.jpg
image by Mediumjasonp, on Flickr

Thanks for the picture, makes it easy to see how they are lay out. Nice little candy's btw.

Thanks, they are good lights too.

i had a picture of the lights on that show the lay out of the LED's, I will see if i can dig it up for you. Hopefully i didnt delete it. But they are not just simply blue and white.

also if you look on OceanRevive website they have a picture showing the colors and layout of the LED's.

There is a layout picture here. Click the 4th picture to the right and then mouse over the larger pic.

http://www.oceanrevivellc.com/goods.php?id=18

How are they now? What percent are you up to? I did a DIY LED light on one of my smaller tanks and my zoas started to stretch, are you having this problem? Also pictures are always good.

I think I've talked to you on ARC, I recognize your tank. No more kessils?

Looks nice hope they work out well for you! What and where did you get those black brackets holding your lights to the ceiling?

Thank You,

sorry for the late response, i kind of forgot about this thread.

as of right now the lights are doing fine. the longer i have them, the more i like them. i still have a few things i would like to fix about them, but over all these are very decent lights.

i am up to 65% on channel 1 and 55% on channel 2. i am trying to take my time on everything, dont want to have any issues.

My corals are reacting good, there are a few that just arent doing great, but most are doing fine. the few that are not doing that well are a couple of shrooms, one zoa colony (small colony) and my clam has not fully opened up. nothiing is dead or showing signs that they are getting ready to die, but they just are not too happy right now.

some of the colors are still just washed out, mainly yellow's that i see the most affect on. then there are some other colors that just POP more then before. Most of the zoanthids in my tank look great with these lights and are not stretching at all. they are still in a nice tight cluster. i will try to take a few more pictures and post them up soon.

they are very nice looking lights and seem to be built very well from what i can see. i have not taken them apart and looked inside though. but again from what i can see and touch, they are very well built for the price.

the brackets i used to hang the lights were made. It took me a lot of looking around until i decided on a method for hanging the lights. i had to piece pretty much everything together from different stores, do some fabrication and finally i had to do a bit of welding and painting to finish the brackets. I can take some pictures and try to put together a parts list if your interested in trying to do the same thing?

but with the way i built the whole hanging setup, i have complete control of how and where the lights are hanging. i can move them side to side, front to back, up and down and with the hangnig kit they send you can tilt the lights also. my only regret is not being able to hide everything. it doesnt look bad, but it still sticks out compaired to a light just sitting on top of the tank. it is nice having the ability to move the lights out of the way when wanting to work on the tank.

Hey BPD,

Yep, same person. I sold the Kessil.

The Kessil is still my choice, but I feel you need more of the Kessils. In other words, I used to run one on my cube, but I think I could have used 2.

The Ocean Revive light really stunned me for the price. It is an excellent fixture.

It's certainly got a very interesting color combination. I wish you could customize it though. The comment on kessils have actually been something that I've read a lot of. I would still love to try them some day, but to get full coverage I would need to spend probably around $1300-1400 by either getting 3 of them, or adding t5 tubes to fill in the shadows. For that price id get better results buying brand new m80 ballasts an running radiums and calling it a day with far better lighting at half the price. It would be several years before the running cost of halides would catch up to the kessil start up cost. At any rate I digress

I'd prefer to think of the health of the livestock rather than the state of my spare change stock. We aren't in this hobby to save money after all. These OR fixtures are definitely intriguing. I've seen some nice pictures when they're properly white balanced. The color combo is still puzzling though. Would love to see them in person

Updates? How do you still like it?

brackets
 

I have used those type of brackets to mount pipe to a wall they have different types of clamps to hold different things, the rails comes in long lengths and you can cut them to size, so I would say look at a real plumbing store to find them.

How programmable are the lights.
Can you have it go at 20% channel 1 and 2 from 8am to 10 am then 50% each channel from 10 to 4pm, then back down to 20% for each channel from 4 to 8 pm
or is it just on and off?

No u can't not nematode. U can only set the intensity for a whole day and not by hours.

thanks

How many of these fixtures would you recommend over a 215 (72x24x29)?

Any PAR readings?

Will the light fade on and off like sunrise and and sundown?

Any updates? Very interested in these

From what I've read, you'd need three of them. Each is suggested to cover a 24" by 24" area. Depth isn't a problem, as you can adjust the intensity up as needed.

Hath,
Brian

any updates? Still liking them or are you seeing fading of colors and not much pop as you had when you first got them? Are these the T247? Or are these the non-programmable ones?