AI Sol Review

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Madreefer

I'm thinking it wont be a good review. Seriosly dude. Turn the intensity down. I started mine out at the recommended 30% and got impatient and cranked them up to 75% and my corals went down hill. It took a couple of months for them to recover. 10 months later after slowly ramping them up 5% every week or so I now am at 100% for 1 hour a day and slowly increasing the time. The corals are now used to the change to LEDs and growth is way faster and color is great. You did alot of research on these lights and your failing to follow almost everybodies advice on the intensity settings.

Well, here's my thoughts on this. Running a 400w bulb 12 inches away from the coral is a lot of light. The AI isn't nearly the light. I ran the 3 units at 100% for a week, 10 inches from the coral, no issues at all. The people that said they had issues, had them in a day or two. Adding 3 more was a big jump, so I did turn them down, and I'm happy with the level. Not too dark, and not what I used to have.

Still, I needed to consider more. Rich (bblinks) took some of my frags from under the 400w, and added them to his 9 AIs at 100%, no problem. So if we reverse that move, taking his lights at 100% and putting them over my frags, still should equal no problem. Right? Or am I not considering something in that example?
Now I'm not gonna leave town and just believe they're going to be ok, 'cause that's reckless. Ok, I'm a bit reckless. But I'm on vacation now and home for the next three weeks, and able to closely watch the corals every hour or so. I've seen them react to too much light before, so I'm confident that if they start going bad, I'm there to catch it.
I'm not just MarkoD'ing the advice, I've carefully considered everything. My SPS collection is worth thousands, so I'm not just going to let them get toasted. Yes, I could be wrong, but I don't think so (this time)