Just orderd the AQUAMANA 156W COB LED

joshbbert · Nov 14, 2014

Defective_Weeble said:
Hopping in on this one, as I bought (and then sold) these lights a few months ago. In fact, mine is probably the first review of them on Amazon.

Pros:

- SUPER nice shimmer. Very similar to Kessil. Not surprising with the COB design.
- Quiet, light fixture. Good cooling. Generally well designed.
- Saw significant growth out of all coral types.

Cons:

- The stock reflectors cause color banding. It's an easy fix to remove the reflectors, but it's a stupid oversight and unnecessary.
- The channel setup is white, then blue/red/green. Not ideal, especially for dawn/dusk effects.
- Appears to be missing low (400-420nm) blues so corals don't get the "pop" that we typically see with LED.

Overall - I sold the lights because I was running one over a 40 breeder and went with a 36-inch T5 setup instead. Removing the reflectors narrowed the beam somewhat, but at around 14 inches above the water line I could still get sufficient coverage for a 36 inch tank. It wasn't that I disliked them and, for the price I think they're probably the nicest lights you'll find. My biggest complaint was the lack of a dedicated blues channel. With both channels mixed, I actually greatly prefer the color of these lights to wide-array setups like Evergrow, ReefBreeders, etc. But the wide-array lights have the distinct advantage of the dedicated blue channel.

Thats strange my unit has the blues on one channel and the whites greens reds and violets on a seperate channel