Experience with mars aqua China lights

fnlyreefready · Sep 17, 2020

JCOLE said:
Hold my Beer......

I can assure you Mars Aqua can and will produce great results if used correctly. I have a 150 gallon Acro dominant tank with over 80 pieces and have used (4) Mars Aqua boxes since day one. The tank is a little over 14 months now and everything is doing great. I also have (2) on my frag tank as well.

The key with these boxes is spectrum. Most CBB's including Mars have too much white. What you want to do is remove all white diodes from the white channel except for around 8. The rest fill in with 440-450nm. Also, replace the greens with 490nm CYAN's. This will allow you to do a 50/50 on both channels and give a good 14k spectrum.

I have my Mars Aqua hooked into my Apex for dimming and it works great. These paired with (2) 80w ATI Blue+ T5's is giving great growth and color.

Besides the spectrum the only issue I have with them is the newer Mar's have COB diodes which are very time consuming to replace. Viparspectra's are the standard 3w diodes which make it much easier to replace and they also have a couple of UV diodes already on the blue channel which is a plus. Going forward I will use Viparspectra just because of the ease to replace the diodes.

Do not listen to those that say these will not grow coral. They have either never used them(or used them correctly) or is just repeating what BRS says as the gospel.

See videos below. These lights put out a crazy amount of PAR. At 100% blues and 80% whites with (2) T5's I was getting around 1500+ PAR at the tops of my rocks. I had to lower my Blues to 40% and whites to 30% to get around 800 at the top and around 350 at the sandbed.

Look at my build thread and on page 9 is where I changed out my Diodes.

Build Thread - JCOLE's ACRO Dominant Build

Completed layout over frag tank on new light. Spectrum looks really good. On my DT I am going to use this layout except I will change out the 4 7500K diodes for 20000K for a crisper white. These are the newer Mars Aqua boards with COB diodes so I had to get a little creative. Prepped and...

www.reef2reef.com

These lights average around 130 bucks on amazon. I got 2 for 85 bucks and they shipped in 20 minutes! Said 2 weeks for shipping but I simply can not believe they will take that long at the rate they shipped. I think it’s worth the try and you guys have beautiful tanks with these. I have a large dining room and I plan to hang these very high anyways over a center piece lagoon table. And using my current t5 over a 90 gallon. I will be tearing down a 74 gallon bowfront soon and not sure what I will be doing with it.

Fishingandreefing · Sep 17, 2020

They were good if you can’t afford the name brand lights. I had them for couple of years and never fail. The only thing that would be nice if they can ram up and down. Especially at that price point

blasterman · Sep 17, 2020

piranhaman00 said:
What BRS found is that the Mars is the worst of the black boxes, yes people have success with them. That doesnt mean they are bad. Get the vipers for bb lights.

This.

I have Mars Aquas, but they are heavily modified. The BRS review found the best black box brand was quite a bit more value than the Mars Aquas and about the same price.

Watch their review. Its fair and they don't conclude BBs are worthless. Just the opposite.

Kris 2020 · Sep 17, 2020

JCOLE said:
This seems to be the issue I always hear. However, where are all these cases for that? At 100% Blues and Whites, my units get a little warm to the touch.

I would be interested to see how they were being used? I have seen some questionable installs involving "Name brand" equipment surrounded by a complete fire hazard.

mine was hung from the ceiling on retractable cables (like the ones used for indoor gardening). I run an open top tank. I also had the light open top and bottom, but enclosed on all sides by a shade with a couple inches of space on each side. Because I need things to look pretty.

Kris 2020 · Sep 17, 2020

fnlyreefready said:
And this is with mars aqua?

Yes. I’ve also used Taotronics lights in the past and had good growth, but had issues with arrays going out twice so gave up on that. They would send me replacement parts but it was a pita.

fnlyreefready · Sep 17, 2020

Fishingandreefing said:
They were good if you can’t afford the name brand lights. I had them for couple of years and never fail. The only thing that would be nice if they can ram up and down. Especially at that price point

I would like them to ramp in but I bet I can find some kind of cheap controller to ramp them in for me

ButteMTDIY · Sep 18, 2020

Found the same deal on the same day. Seems almost too good to be true but I still placed the order. Hopefully they arrive. Please post if you receive yours and reassure me I didn't get scammed. Thanks!

Timfish · Sep 19, 2020

The problem I've seen over the years is any light that has plastic lenses has them discolor over time and any bracket that holds them in place can get brittle. The advantage, and maybe disadvantage

, of black box leds is they can be cheaply replaced instead tearing apart to replace lenses. Neither of these lenses were over 3 years old. They were run at full power for at least 6 hours a day. From what I've seen running bigger fixtures than needed at lower power to get the appropriate light levels will extend the life of lenses. Fixtures that use glass like Kessils won't have that issue.

Flippers4pups · Sep 19, 2020

Timfish said:
The problem I've seen over the years is any light that has plastic lenses has them discolor over time and any bracket that holds them in place can get brittle. The advantage, and maybe disadvantage , of black box leds is they can be cheaply replaced instead tearing apart to replace lenses. Neither of these lenses were over 3 years old. They were run at full power for at least 6 hours a day. From what I've seen running bigger fixtures than needed at lower power to get the appropriate light levels will extend the life of lenses. Fixtures that use glass like Kessils won't have that issue.

What light did this come off of?

fnlyreefready · Sep 19, 2020

ButteMTDIY said:
Found the same deal on the same day. Seems almost too good to be true but I still placed the order. Hopefully they arrive. Please post if you receive yours and reassure me I didn't get scammed. Thanks!

It’s secure via PayPal if I receive a faulty idea I will simply file a report and have my money back

fnlyreefready · Sep 19, 2020

Timfish said:
The problem I've seen over the years is any light that has plastic lenses has them discolor over time and any bracket that holds them in place can get brittle. The advantage, and maybe disadvantage , of black box leds is they can be cheaply replaced instead tearing apart to replace lenses. Neither of these lenses were over 3 years old. They were run at full power for at least 6 hours a day. From what I've seen running bigger fixtures than needed at lower power to get the appropriate light levels will extend the life of lenses. Fixtures that use glass like Kessils won't have that issue.

Salt water tears everything up

a4edwin · Sep 19, 2020

BRS doesn’t sell the Orphek OR’s does that make them bad lights? I’ve seen people here getting rid of they’re aquatic life hybrids jus to add them.

fnlyreefready · Sep 20, 2020

I’m making big moves guys

Timfish · Sep 21, 2020

Flippers4pups said:
What light did this come off of?

The single lens was from a PopularGrow (Orphic is using the same design). Here's lenses and burnt LEDs from a Reef Builders LED fixture and a different no name black box. This system has had Viper SPectra's for 3 years now running at about 20% (blue channel 25%, white channel 20%) and have shown no discoloration.