Thread: AI Sol Review
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Old 07-02-2012, 08:22 PM
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Aquattro Aquattro is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: Victoria, BC
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Not exactly a month in, but here's my closing thoughts on this thread.

Overall, very happy with the AI Sol units, fantastic value for my dollar. Easy to setup on the Apex VDM module, no experience with the AI controller, but I'm told it's pretty simple too.
I chose to ignore most of the advice regarding initial intensity and started at 70/75/75, quickly increasing to 85/100/100 (w/b/rb). No issues at all with these numbers, as I suspected. These units are nice and bright, but they do not replace or compare to 400w MH lighting.

After a month, most corals have retained the color they had when I switched. A couple have become dull and almost brown. My pink and blue milli is now my mostly blue milli. Still nice, but not what it was.
I'm experimenting with supplemental T5 to see what I can get back in regards to color, I'll see how that goes over the next few months.

LED is nice for several reasons (less power, no heat, no bulb replacement, etc) and they do provide adequate light to bring out or maintain color in SPS corals. I've gotten used to the light separation, mostly, and overall I can live with this long term.

However, given unlimited resources, ability to more effectively manage evaporation and a lifetime supply of MH bulbs, I still feel that the 400w Radium MH is THE lighting choice for the best SPS tank possible.
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Brad

Last edited by Aquattro; 07-02-2012 at 08:25 PM.
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