My Reefbrite LED's - update... 1 unit failed

[Slick Fork]

Hi there,

This may be the first review for these suckers on a Canreef. I should start by saying thanks to the guys at Oceanic Corals, this was my first purchase from you guys and based on this experience it won't be the last, that spills over to to "Reef Wholesale" who shipped the lights to me directly, they arrived 4 days early!!! Really happy with the whole experience

Now, on to the lights:
My camera battery is still dead from the weekend and tomorrow is my wedding anniversary but I WILL get some pics up and posted by Friday but for now you'll have to be happy with my written first impressions. Besides, there's lots of pics of the lights out of the box already!

The fixtures I received were the 24" all white, and the 24" 50/50

So, first impressions are really good. The light strips are MUCH heavier then I thought they would be, build quality seems good they aren't some flimsy made in china contraption. The mounting brackets appear sturdy enough. No instructions were to be found with the lights but really, if you can't figure out how to hook these up you shouldn't be allowed to wander unsupervised.

The all white is quite yellow. The guys on reef central say 8500k but it looks yellower then that to me. The 50/50 seems to have a mix of a nice crisp white and a (maybe royal) blue. And WOW are they bright. I expected them to be bright but this surpasses my expectations. I had originally thought to get an all white and an all blue, but after reading some reviews on RC from a couple of people who got the all blues and really didn't like the "black light" effect I decided on the 50/50 instead. I think now, that I maybe should've gone with the all blue but time will tell I guess!

My plan for these lights is to incorporate them into a 4 bulb tek light. I am torn between trying to add them onto the sides and thus having 4 t5s and 2 led's or replacing 2 of the t5 bulbs with the LED's. Right now, replacing 2 of the T5s seems to be winning because A: it will look cleaner, B: my tank is only 12" front to back so there's not THAT much extra space to work with and C: I think I will have more then enough light with just two T5s supplementing the LED's.

I'll have to cut the reflector to get the strips in. If I massacre it correctly it will look like this:
-front-
T5- ATI AquaBlue
Reefbrite 50/50
Reefbrite All-white
T5-ATI Blue+
-Back-

I'll probably go through a half dozen or so T5 bulbs until i get the colour that I like!