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)

[tang daddy]

Brad, that's awesome you got 6 ai blacks!!

Your new name should be darth vader, could I make a suggestion?

I found that after a month of running my sols that alot of stuff browned out, the intensity was alot lower for acclimating but previous to this I had ran diy led and had decent colour but the temperature ofthe light was more 10k because the ratio of cw to RB/b was 1:1 now with the ai it 1:2 so it's pretty obvious that there is less white making the tank abit dim.

Getting back to what I was saying alot of the corals browned, I noticed the reds pinks and yellow suffered abit even purple and blues were browning abit, that is until I added 2 Fiji purple....

Within a week everything colored up and is continuing to color, I was so fascinated I told Rich to add some to his tank.
I truly believe that as the colour blends the only colour missing is the reds. I oftensee green in the sand and that is a mix of the cw/b. You previously mentioned that you may want to add t5 supplementation in the future, if you do try the KZ Fiji, you will be happier with the colour of the corals.

Also if you think about it there is only 24w of white per fixture multiply that by 6 and you got 144w of light that the corals use that is nearly not enough for fast sps growth. I am sure now my 75g sps tank may need another 2 fixtures because 2 fixtures isn't enough light for my sps.

[Willito]

Although this is a AI Sol review, is there any reason why you didn't want to wait for the release of the AI Vega? This light is supposely the latest greates in LED that AI has to offer and is closely price to the SOL.

[Aquattro]

Ya, I'm probably going to try a single strip of T5, probably that bulb. I gave away my T5 strip fixture, guess I'll see if I can get it back

On a good note, this morning is the first day I've been able to see the sunrise ramp, and I'm really liking it!

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Willito

Although this is a AI Sol review, is there any reason why you didn't want to wait for the release of the AI Vega? This light is supposely the latest greates in LED that AI has to offer and is closely price to the SOL.

The Vega is to be released anytime now. I've heard this for 6 months Price is about another 100 bucks, times 6 plus taxes, made it out of my price range. I also saw the disco promo video and thought that was the dumbest thing ever, and completely swayed me into not waiting.
Overall, I'm very pleased with my choice of unit, most of my issues are LED generic, so the Vega wouldn't have resolved most of them.

[blaster]

I think it looks good.It looks like i'm getting the elos aquatop lighting and tempo controller for my elos tank.I'm guesing probably double the price.I hope i dont see any regretts paying over 2000.00.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by blaster

I think it looks good.It looks like i'm getting the elos aquatop lighting and tempo controller for my elos tank.I'm guesing probably double the price.I hope i dont see any regretts paying over 2000.00.

I'm not sure you'd have any issues setting up a new system, really nothing to compare it to. For me, removing the MH and adding the LED I could immediately see the difference.
The elos looks like a nice unit, I'm sure you'll be happy with it.

I added a 4' fiji purple T5 to see if it would fill in some of what's missing. It hasn't really, might need a bigger one.

[blaster]

You should be doing frag packs brad,you have some juicy stuff and a very nice looking aquarium.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by blaster

You should be doing frag packs brad,you have some juicy stuff and a very nice looking aquarium.

Thanks. One day, I'll have some frags available. My frag tank went south, so I need to start it over...

[lastlight]

Have you tried supplementing with radiums?