AI Hydra 52 review

heckeng · 10/31/2014, 01:21 PM

Hello all, I have been running AI Hydra 52's on my 90 for about a month and a half now and thought I would give a review and comparison to the AI Sol Blues I ran back in 2011.

Background:
90 gallon with a 30 gallon sump. Tank is 48" wide, 18" front to back and 25". It is pretty simple, only running chaeto and a Reef Octopus skimmer. Tank is mostly soft corals and LPS

History:
Back in 2011, I bought some AI Sol Blues (3) and put them on top of my tank coming from halides. The colors were nice but I had results that slowly went down hill until I sold the SOLs and went back to Halides. Some of my Zoas liked the LEDS and some hated them. Not being happy with the halides either, I bought an ATI T5 fixture. The colors were pretty good with the ATI fixture but I was never happy with coral growth and lack of shimmer. Then I had a ballast go out so that got me looking around again and I looked at the new LED fixtures out and some significant changes have been made so I thought I would try out 2 of the Hydra 52's. I have them mounted about 14" above the tank, parallel with the front glass.

Features and changes compared to the Sol Blues:
As most of you reading this will know, AI now uses 80 degree lenses and a frosted or opaque lens to diffuse the light instead of the 40 or 70 degree clear lenses on the Sols. They use 4 pucks per fixture with 13 LEDs per puck compared to the Sols 8 pucks with 3 LEDs per puck. They are also integrating red, green, violet, deep violet, white and two different shades of blues instead of the two blues and one white of the Sols. With the Sols I used started out with stock 40 degree lenses and I switched to 70 degree lenses which helped control coral burning issues.

Performance:

I'm not sure if the new color spectrum with extra LEDs, the opaque lenses, or the 80 degree spread have any impact or not but something IS different because the reaction I get from my corals with these lights are definitely different from how they reacted to the Sols. When I put the Sols on my tank, I noticed very quickly if I had the lights up too high. Corals would nearly immediately retract and often would expel zooxanthellae, depending on just how high the intensity was. This would happen at 30-40 percent power even which is very dim to the human eye, so you had to be VERY careful with those lights. With the Hydra 52s, I started out low around 30% and ramped up using the coral acclimation feature which is awesome and takes out the temptation to ramp up too fast. After a month, I was up to 75% on the Blues and violets, 50% on reds greens and whites. I have only seen one coral, a frilly mushroom, expel any zooxanthellae at all and I am not sure if that was even light related as only one mushroom on the rock did it while the others did not. None of my zoas are burning, and through the acclimation process several zoas actually started reaching for more light. None of my corals have EVER retracted during this whole process which is strange to me when comparing the 52s to the Sols. They seem to have not even gone through any painful acclimation process at all. The coloration is better than any lights I have used yet, and the brightness to my eye is also great. I don't have any desire to push the lights higher based on the LEDs looking dim to me which was a problem with the Sol Blues. I also see a good amount of shimmer, but I don't notice any of the disco affect that some people mention on the older fixtures.

Overall, the 52’s have yet to prove themselves, I will check in after another couple months and we will see if the corals are doing well or not. It looks promising so far though.
Also, I will post some pictures of the tank, lights and corals in a couple days. I am in a hotel room away from my tank for a couple days.

Mark Bianco · 10/31/2014, 02:38 PM

I was happy with my sols as far as coral growth, but could not get the color that was pleasing to my eye. When I switched in January of last year to the 52's I was very impressed. I get great growth on all my corals especially on the sps corals. I went from originally power compacts to MH then the sol's and now the 52's and could not be happier.

Mark

malalite · 09/04/2017, 06:34 AM

I see this is an older post. Curious after running them for a while did you keep them? Dump them? Did the corals do ok?

johnike · 09/04/2017, 07:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by malalite

I see this is an older post. Curious after running them for a while did you keep them? Dump them? Did the corals do ok?

I have Mark Biancos 52's now and couldn't be happier with them.
2 of them over my 93 cube are growing sticks like crazy.

10/31/2014, 01:21 PM	#1
heckeng Registered Member Join Date: May 2011 Location: Columbia, MO Posts: 260	AI Hydra 52 review Hello all, I have been running AI Hydra 52's on my 90 for about a month and a half now and thought I would give a review and comparison to the AI Sol Blues I ran back in 2011. Background: 90 gallon with a 30 gallon sump. Tank is 48" wide, 18" front to back and 25". It is pretty simple, only running chaeto and a Reef Octopus skimmer. Tank is mostly soft corals and LPS History: Back in 2011, I bought some AI Sol Blues (3) and put them on top of my tank coming from halides. The colors were nice but I had results that slowly went down hill until I sold the SOLs and went back to Halides. Some of my Zoas liked the LEDS and some hated them. Not being happy with the halides either, I bought an ATI T5 fixture. The colors were pretty good with the ATI fixture but I was never happy with coral growth and lack of shimmer. Then I had a ballast go out so that got me looking around again and I looked at the new LED fixtures out and some significant changes have been made so I thought I would try out 2 of the Hydra 52's. I have them mounted about 14" above the tank, parallel with the front glass. Features and changes compared to the Sol Blues: As most of you reading this will know, AI now uses 80 degree lenses and a frosted or opaque lens to diffuse the light instead of the 40 or 70 degree clear lenses on the Sols. They use 4 pucks per fixture with 13 LEDs per puck compared to the Sols 8 pucks with 3 LEDs per puck. They are also integrating red, green, violet, deep violet, white and two different shades of blues instead of the two blues and one white of the Sols. With the Sols I used started out with stock 40 degree lenses and I switched to 70 degree lenses which helped control coral burning issues. Performance: I'm not sure if the new color spectrum with extra LEDs, the opaque lenses, or the 80 degree spread have any impact or not but something IS different because the reaction I get from my corals with these lights are definitely different from how they reacted to the Sols. When I put the Sols on my tank, I noticed very quickly if I had the lights up too high. Corals would nearly immediately retract and often would expel zooxanthellae, depending on just how high the intensity was. This would happen at 30-40 percent power even which is very dim to the human eye, so you had to be VERY careful with those lights. With the Hydra 52s, I started out low around 30% and ramped up using the coral acclimation feature which is awesome and takes out the temptation to ramp up too fast. After a month, I was up to 75% on the Blues and violets, 50% on reds greens and whites. I have only seen one coral, a frilly mushroom, expel any zooxanthellae at all and I am not sure if that was even light related as only one mushroom on the rock did it while the others did not. None of my zoas are burning, and through the acclimation process several zoas actually started reaching for more light. None of my corals have EVER retracted during this whole process which is strange to me when comparing the 52s to the Sols. They seem to have not even gone through any painful acclimation process at all. The coloration is better than any lights I have used yet, and the brightness to my eye is also great. I don't have any desire to push the lights higher based on the LEDs looking dim to me which was a problem with the Sol Blues. I also see a good amount of shimmer, but I don't notice any of the disco affect that some people mention on the older fixtures. Overall, the 52’s have yet to prove themselves, I will check in after another couple months and we will see if the corals are doing well or not. It looks promising so far though. Also, I will post some pictures of the tank, lights and corals in a couple days. I am in a hotel room away from my tank for a couple days. __________________ 90 gallon Zoa/Ricordia tank, 6x54w ATI dimmable Sunpower, SRO 1000int

10/31/2014, 02:38 PM	#2
Mark Bianco In Memoriam Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Infinity and Beyond Posts: 2,445	I was happy with my sols as far as coral growth, but could not get the color that was pleasing to my eye. When I switched in January of last year to the 52's I was very impressed. I get great growth on all my corals especially on the sps corals. I went from originally power compacts to MH then the sol's and now the 52's and could not be happier. Mark

09/04/2017, 06:34 AM	#3
malalite Registered Member Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Kentucky Posts: 52	I see this is an older post. Curious after running them for a while did you keep them? Dump them? Did the corals do ok?