I was on the market for some replacement LED lighting for my Frag Tank. The things that were most important to me were;
- Proven Reliability at the best possible price
- Good Customer Service & Response Time when things went wrong
- Spacing between LED's for a better even distribution of light over a larger area
- Wide Optics
- A traditional heat sink
- More Blue then White LED with a couple Red
- Dimming
Things that were not important to me
- Internal controller (Dusk/Dawn)
- Apex controllable
- Night LED
After a few weeks of research I landed on the Arctic S026 distributed by Ocean Revive. A few emails with them to negotiate the price and we had 5 units in route. I paid for them last Sunday and he shipped out Monday morning and arrived today.
They were packaged well and came with the LED unit, 2 power cords and 2 adjustable hangers. One didn't come in a retail box like the rest. Not sure why, it appeared new, no dust or any indication of usage.
The fixiture casing's feels sturdy and has a nice dark gray matte finish to it. It feels like a powder coat of some sort and looks to be made from aluminum.
I opened one up to get a look inside and was pleased with the wire management. The builder did a nice job on the layout. All wiring is custom fit has moisture protected connections and extra wrap to keep cords where they should be.
Here you can see the LED's are spaced out to utilize the full 16x10.5" of the fixture. That was important to me so I didn't have an extremely hot spot center of light and could utilize the full intensity of the light without burning up the coral directly bellow it. Another feature of the LED layout I wasn't looking for, but found to be a good design is the spacing in center between the 4 banks of LED's. This allows you to put the fixture over a tank brace and minimize the light loss. Because of this I ordered an extra 5th unit to replace the current LED in my display tank that is directly over the center brace.
The LED color selection is just what I was looking for. It comes with a total of 48 individual lights running on two channels. [float=right]
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Channel White
- Red 660nm 2pcs
- Green 520nm 2pcs
- White 12000K 8pcs
- White 10000K 6pcs
- Violet 420nm 6pcs
Channel Blue
- Blue 450nm 16pcs
- Blue 470nm 8pcs
I installed one over the frag tank and I really like the color. With both the white and blue channel at the same level it puts off the perfect color for me. I am satisfied that I made the right choice however I will check back in at 3 months, six and a year. Hopefully in a year from now all the lights will be in good working condition, coral will have grown and if there is an issue it will be handled well by Ocean Revive.
Note the pic to the right is from distributors website. I wasn't able to get a good shot of the colors.
http://www.oceanrevivellc.com