Sunbrite F Series LED light fixture

[bimmer88]

Mine just came in today and i've finally got it plugged in and working.. I was previously using 3x250mh Phoenix 14k bulbs... All i've got to say is this thing is WAY WAY WAY brighter than my metal halide setup... had to turn brightness down to about 65% so that my corals don't bleach... of course i'm going to slowly be turning it up and allowing corals to acclimate... this thing is amazing... probably the best purchase i've ever made for my reef tank...

[mikid]

pics....pics....

[bimmer88]

Not the greatest pics but here ya go... the tank shot shows lighting at 75% brightness... after playing around with adjustments for a while i found that this is about the same as my halides... going to start bumping it up slowly... You can't look directly at the lights when it's a hundred percent... i glanced at it real quickly and it hurt like hell.. blinded me for a good few seconds....

[mikid]

looks pretty brite...............

[artkwan]

Did you get this at Exotic Aquarium? Their pics are on the Sunbrite website, and I believe one of the managers there also manages Sunbrite...

[bimmer88]

Originally Posted by artkwan

Did you get this at Exotic Aquarium? Their pics are on the Sunbrite website, and I believe one of the managers there also manages Sunbrite...

Yep... got it from exotic...

[bimmer88]

since i no longer have the metal halides producing all that heat i think i can now add glass over my tank to reduce the amount of evaporation...

[Montreal Ray]

Nice. How many fixtures and what size tank is that?

thanks

[bimmer88]

Originally Posted by Montreal Ray

Nice. How many fixtures and what size tank is that?

thanks

Just 1 fixture... 180 gal

[Montreal Ray]

Originally Posted by bimmer88

Just 1 fixture... 180 gal

so 72"? They are 7" wide..I assume it is covering the whole tank nicely?

Would you mind telling me how high you have it off the water and would you by any chance have close-ups shot of the fixture and powersupply?

They are coming into canada as well, http://www.sunbritecanada.ca/

[Northern Sensei]

can you post a video on them as well, maybe explaining the pros and cons or just your overall opinion of the light, i've ordered one ( 72 inch fixture for my 225g) and i can't freekin' wait

[chris88]

Yes, please keep us posted i ordered one as well and wont receive it until mid may.

[RonMidtownStomp]

I don't think you want to seal in the top of your tank with glass. There is a huge amount of O2 -> CO2 cycling that happens and I wouldn't be surprised if that resulted in suffocation.

[artkwan]

Originally Posted by RonMidtownStomp

I don't think you want to seal in the top of your tank with glass. There is a huge amount of O2 -> CO2 cycling that happens and I wouldn't be surprised if that resulted in suffocation.

Thank you for that. I did not know that! Learning everyday from you experienced reefers!

[bimmer88]

Originally Posted by Northern Sensei

can you post a video on them as well, maybe explaining the pros and cons or just your overall opinion of the light, i've ordered one ( 72 inch fixture for my 225g) and i can't freekin' wait

Sorry, no video... but i love the fixture... VERY bright... low heat... and you can adjust the colors just the way you like from your iphone.... instead of having actinics come on at certain times and metal halide coming on at other times, i just have it slowly light up and dim down... pretty neat feature....

[nrapp33]

Bimmer, where did you order your light from?

[Hagisan]

The LED setup looks very bright indeed. You may want to slowly acclimate your corals to the new light to avoid stress and possible bleaching. You may find that even 65% in the beginning may be too much. When I first installed my AIs, I did not head the other posts, and fried a couple corals. Keep a close eye on them.

I really need to get the club's par meter and get my par numbers on record.

Looking good. Keep us posted on progress and of course more pics.

[bimmer88]

Originally Posted by Hagisan

The LED setup looks very bright indeed. You may want to slowly acclimate your corals to the new light to avoid stress and possible bleaching. You may find that even 65% in the beginning may be too much. When I first installed my AIs, I did not head the other posts, and fried a couple corals. Keep a close eye on them.

I really need to get the club's par meter and get my par numbers on record.

Looking good. Keep us posted on progress and of course more pics.

Yeah, keeping a close eye on them... so far everything seems to be OK...

Originally Posted by nrapp33

Bimmer, where did you order your light from?

Ordered them from exotic...

[Northern Sensei]

Well the last i heard, the lights weren't going to be available until the end of this month or beginning of May.
I'm obviously hoping for SOONER then later!

The price here in Canada was $1400 for the 72 inch fixture, which does have a few leds less then the Vertex i was looking at, but the vertex comes with a huge price tag of around $4000 with tax.

Not sure how many ppl actually pre ordered here in Canada, but i would love to hear more from those who've purchased them in the US.

I would also love to see some videos, other then the ones posted by SUNBRITE.

I know i plan to video the whole thing for others to see for themselves, right from the unboxing to the setup and my immediate impression as well as some follow up videos. Mostly for my own records as well as for others to get a real feel for the light.....ESPECIALLY THOSE SKEPTICS out there!

[bimmer88]

i'd post videos but the photography equipment i have is not able to accurately capture what the lights actually look like... the photos i have above look almost nothing like what it looks like in person... i was a skeptic before but now i have proof LED technology has caught up to MH... these are way brighter(visibily.. not just with some par meter) than my MH's...

[ieatchinese]

I purchased two of their 48 inch fixtures and received them the day before yesterday (exotic). I have corresponded with Jon (Johnny) from Sunbrite and he has been very supportive and responsive on the emails. Now, I was communicating with him not to complain or report a problem. I think that needs to be said.

I had AI Sol-Blues (6 modules) before and sold them because I was moving and didn't know if I was going to setup another tank anytime soon. Well, now that I am settled in the Boston area (previously in the Chicago area), I have been missing my tank and its inhabitants. I ordered a custom tank (150 gallon peninsula 48"x30"x25"). I wanted to be as energy efficient as possible and therefore I wanted LED's again and I also went with the new DC pumps from RLSS (another great story). Now back to the LED's....

The AI Sol's have 3 channels, cool white, blue and royal blue, all Cree LED's. When I saw the specs on the Sunbrite F-Series, I was very interested. The AI Sol's do not have enough of the spectrum for all corals. Most of my corals did just fine and my carpet anemones did very good under these lights, but my red planet hated them. It turned completely dark burgundy (looked black and no longer had any green). I put this piece in my friends tank with T5's and it colored back up beautifully in 2 weeks.

I have high hopes for the Sunbrite lights. I do not have the tank setup yet, but I unpacked my lights and got them going just to check them out.......WOW! The interface is well done on the iDevices and very easy to use. Manual controls on the ballast box are a must as a backup. Would hate to have a problem with the WiFi or iPhone and not be able to control the light. Good thinking on the part of Sunbrite. The number of different color channels in these lights is great, providing everything from UV to the Red end of the spectrum. I will be taking photos and video of my build and will post as it goes. Tank comes on the 21st and I have a week vacation to do it all. The lights are right now the icing on the cake.

[Northern Sensei]

As i've mentioned before i've purchased one of the Sunbrite f series 72 inch fixtures.
Just got the email yesterday that here in Canada we can expect delivery of
the units the first week of May.
My excitement can hardly be contained and i will definitely be doing a review of this light.
I've heard nothing but good things and i can't wait.

Would love to C more ppl post videos on youtube....not just videos to music, but rather talking about the light etc.....

[ieatchinese]

Well, I have begun the build and have made significant progress since starting two days ago.



While I like all the colors that the light generates, I do have a couple of complaints.

I was a little concerned about the fact that the LED's in this fixture didn't come with some kind of lens/optic. I thought about this and based upon my experience with the AI Sol's, which made some hot-spots with the lenses, I thought that not having lenses would provide more of a dispersed light .......well, it sure does. The light splash with these fixtures is huge. The light that gets out of the tank and onto the ground and onto the surrounding walls is significant. A large reflector that surrounds the light, but would keep more of the overall light inside the aquarium would be something that I would buy in a heartbeat. This would make the light less attractive, but that isn't why I bought them anyway. I may try to fabricate some reflectors for this purpose, but I don't like when I see reflectors that are not professionally made (stamped and formed so that they both look good and are precisely optimized. Not sure that all of this is for naught. The light splash may change once I have water in the aquarium. I will be filling in the next day or so and will post the outcome at that time.

One other thing, and this one really bothers me, when power goes out on the lights, they do not begin the programmed timers ....they just come on full blast, every channel. This is not right. This is how a tank full of corals gets fried. If I am away on a business trip and the power goes out in my neighborhood and then comes back on, the lights come on full blast and stay that way. I have only done a couple of short tests to come to this conclusion, but I was wondering if anyone else has observed this. Again, this is a huge concern and needs to be fixed. I can connect again with my iPhone and reapply the timers, but as I said, the issue is when someone is gone from home for more than a few hours. These lights generate a lot of PAR and corals can very easily get torched if this scenario happens...and it will.

I have also asked the manufacturer if they would consider making the lights so that they simply connect to my local area network, just like any PC or just like my thermostat (NEST) does. This would allow remote, internet access to the lights and then I could control them when I am on the other side of the earth. My Apex would send me the message that I had a power outage and I could then make sure that the lights were operating as they should.

One last thing. I have two of these fixtures over my tank. They do not communicate in anyway with each other. When I am setting up timers, I have to do them separately and cannot copy timers from one to the other. This makes for a really laborious and time consuming setup to match one fixtures timers and settings to the other. A web-based interface to the fixtures and an update to the iPhone app that allows one to copy a complete set of timers from one to the other would be most beneficial. Maybe even a configuration page that allows one to designate one of the fixtures as the master and all others that the master can detect, as slaves. This would be a very good improvement with the lights.

The fans in the control boxes are also pretty loud. Not such a big deal for me as they will be mounted inside the wall, but we'll see if I can hear them after they are embedded. Probably should be proportional speed control so that they are not running full blast unless certain temperatures in the box are detected.

Other than all the above, the lights are nice lights. I love the spectrum that they have and the possibilities of spectrum combinations. The fit and finish is very good. Now just need to tell us if the firmware can be upgraded in the field (through the iPhone app?) and make the units more accessible and connected to one another.

[Northern Sensei]

Originally Posted by ieatchinese

Well, I have begun the build and have made significant progress since starting two days ago.



While I like all the colors that the light generates, I do have a couple of complaints.

I was a little concerned about the fact that the LED's in this fixture didn't come with some kind of lens/optic. I thought about this and based upon my experience with the AI Sol's, which made some hot-spots with the lenses, I thought that not having lenses would provide more of a dispersed light .......well, it sure does. The light splash with these fixtures is huge. The light that gets out of the tank and onto the ground and onto the surrounding walls is significant. A large reflector that surrounds the light, but would keep more of the overall light inside the aquarium would be something that I would buy in a heartbeat. This would make the light less attractive, but that isn't why I bought them anyway. I may try to fabricate some reflectors for this purpose, but I don't like when I see reflectors that are not professionally made (stamped and formed so that they both look good and are precisely optimized. Not sure that all of this is for naught. The light splash may change once I have water in the aquarium. I will be filling in the next day or so and will post the outcome at that time.

One other thing, and this one really bothers me, when power goes out on the lights, they do not begin the programmed timers ....they just come on full blast, every channel. This is not right. This is how a tank full of corals gets fried. If I am away on a business trip and the power goes out in my neighborhood and then comes back on, the lights come on full blast and stay that way. I have only done a couple of short tests to come to this conclusion, but I was wondering if anyone else has observed this. Again, this is a huge concern and needs to be fixed. I can connect again with my iPhone and reapply the timers, but as I said, the issue is when someone is gone from home for more than a few hours. These lights generate a lot of PAR and corals can very easily get torched if this scenario happens...and it will.

I have also asked the manufacturer if they would consider making the lights so that they simply connect to my local area network, just like any PC or just like my thermostat (NEST) does. This would allow remote, internet access to the lights and then I could control them when I am on the other side of the earth. My Apex would send me the message that I had a power outage and I could then make sure that the lights were operating as they should.

One last thing. I have two of these fixtures over my tank. They do not communicate in anyway with each other. When I am setting up timers, I have to do them separately and cannot copy timers from one to the other. This makes for a really laborious and time consuming setup to match one fixtures timers and settings to the other. A web-based interface to the fixtures and an update to the iPhone app that allows one to copy a complete set of timers from one to the other would be most beneficial. Maybe even a configuration page that allows one to designate one of the fixtures as the master and all others that the master can detect, as slaves. This would be a very good improvement with the lights.

The fans in the control boxes are also pretty loud. Not such a big deal for me as they will be mounted inside the wall, but we'll see if I can hear them after they are embedded. Probably should be proportional speed control so that they are not running full blast unless certain temperatures in the box are detected.

Other than all the above, the lights are nice lights. I love the spectrum that they have and the possibilities of spectrum combinations. The fit and finish is very good. Now just need to tell us if the firmware can be upgraded in the field (through the iPhone app?) and make the units more accessible and connected to one another.

Great review!!
You bring to light a few grreat points that hopefully will be addressed my the manufacturer.
We should have ours here in Canada within a week or so....CAN'T WAIT!!

[RonMidtownStomp]

What physiologically is happening to the corals when it goes from dark to bright quickly? I've never heard of that being a problem before?