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When LED lights first hit the market 10-15 years ago many were skeptical that they would ever grow coral. There was no way they could compete with metal halides and t5s.
My grandfather and I keep a 265 gallon reef tank together and we made the plunge to leds back in early 2011 with 6 Aqua Illumination SOL lights. With significantly lower power bills each month and the corals growing without missing a beat it was obvious that LEDs were going to be the lights of the future.
They promised 10 years of life and lasted even longer, we had to send 2/6 out for service to replace some burnt leds around 5-6 years in and bought some back up replacements just in case. AI fixed those lights no problem. I think we just paid for shipping back then. So now in 2021 we were starting to see a few more diodes burn out and we contacted AI. They told us they no longer service SOLs but they offered us 40% off new hydra 64s if we sent in our SOLs.
Before sending them off i took some par readings to make sure we wouldnt shock the corals with the transfer. After 10 years they were still putting out 450-600 par where most of our Acros are! We could easily have continued to run these lights for years to come I'm sure, but we'd have to make the switch eventually and decided it was time. I just got done putting the first 3 hydra 64s on and the next 3 will be coming soon.
After a solid 10 years of running these lights and excellent customer service, I will gladly run AI products for as long as I keep aquariums. Heres some pictures from the sols and ill add some after the rest of the hydras get here.
My grandfather and I keep a 265 gallon reef tank together and we made the plunge to leds back in early 2011 with 6 Aqua Illumination SOL lights. With significantly lower power bills each month and the corals growing without missing a beat it was obvious that LEDs were going to be the lights of the future.
They promised 10 years of life and lasted even longer, we had to send 2/6 out for service to replace some burnt leds around 5-6 years in and bought some back up replacements just in case. AI fixed those lights no problem. I think we just paid for shipping back then. So now in 2021 we were starting to see a few more diodes burn out and we contacted AI. They told us they no longer service SOLs but they offered us 40% off new hydra 64s if we sent in our SOLs.
Before sending them off i took some par readings to make sure we wouldnt shock the corals with the transfer. After 10 years they were still putting out 450-600 par where most of our Acros are! We could easily have continued to run these lights for years to come I'm sure, but we'd have to make the switch eventually and decided it was time. I just got done putting the first 3 hydra 64s on and the next 3 will be coming soon.
After a solid 10 years of running these lights and excellent customer service, I will gladly run AI products for as long as I keep aquariums. Heres some pictures from the sols and ill add some after the rest of the hydras get here.
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