Quote:
Originally Posted by gmneil
have you guys checked out the ai led fixtures, i have been looking into them and am considering giving them a try myself. with all the different fixtures having been tested on this system i am curious about your thoughts on them?
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Yes, we have one over our refugium since one of our plasma lights died
We tried it over the display tank and seriously considered going with it. If you go back in the thread you will find some pictures of it over the arch. The LUX is higher than the ones we are using, but the PAR is lower and the spectrum is different. The AI unit has a nice controller (ours fell in the water after a few days), the fixture looks slick and it is very well built.
LEDs are following the same evolution as metal halide, and fluorescent before that. You start out with standard lighting industry components designed for home and office use, then specialty reef-specific technology emerges. The hobby used 5,000K venture MHL bulbs, then progressed to 6,500K Iwasaki, then 10,000K, 14,000K and finally 20,000K where you no longer needed actinic lighting. First and second generation LEDs had to rely on 7,000-8,500K white emitters, supplemented with lots of blue and royal blue emitters to drown out the yellow colour. We went with the only company that was offering high colour temperature LEDs (16,000K) so the choice wasn't difficult.