Fluval Marine reef 3.0 review

[SeaJay]

I have these and have been very happy with them, but I’m still a newb and no corals yet. Tank is approaching a year now and I’m looking to get my first nem. Interesting to see what others are able to do with these lights.

I do wish there was a way to sync multiple lights allowing you to control them as one rather than individually.

Here are my settings.

I love the faint moonlight at night.

 

[Sarah24!]

Hello,

When I had my 125 I ran four of the Fluval Marine 2.0 with the WiFi and they did great. Do not under estimate the whites I could run the blues at 100 but whites were at 60
And I had two of the WiFi links because the button was horrible.

Now fast forward I have the current marine pro 4117 which is extremely powerful and equal to the Radion g4 and kessill etc. (I do not have the ic marine pros FYI but those have blue tooth and run with the ic loop system and the Bluetooth comes free with the ic pros now.).

I had no idea that fluval made the 3.0 but I still have all four of my fluvals sitting in their boxes in my closet. I didn’t have any problems with softies or lps. I was able to grow some sps but it depends on what it was. As a matter of fact I still have the fluval 2.0 settings saved on my phone with the app when they were on my 125. These lights are great for the price and have a very nice blue to them. It is one of the better blues that I have seen. I tried to use them with my marine pros on my 240, but the marine pros are at 33% whites and my tank is 34 inches tall, and I’m between 180-200 on the sand bed. Yet they also have a 60 degree lens where the marine ic pro has a 90 and fluvals have a 120.

Edit you can run two at a time with the WiFi controller, and then when you log in it will give you a different fluval number. But I ran for at one time and then controlled them in pairs.

 

[SeaJay]

Edit you can run two at a time with the WiFi controller, and then when you log in it will give you a different fluval number. But I ran for at one time and then controlled them in pairs.

The 3.0 is Bluetooth, no WiFi. If there is a way to run a pair together, I haven’t found it yet.

 

[Justin Allen]

What all is in your tank?

 

[Justin Allen]

What all is in your tank?

 

[Justin Allen]

I have two lights running the settings I posted up there on this just wanted to see if it’s good? I’ve been running it with it for awhile, most corals seem to Like it but some not as much

 

[bigcheese]

I'm running a single 3.0 48", found it a bit weak for even some LPS corals. Note these are not Bluetooth, they're BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy)- so joining them into a network to act as one device isn't technically possible.

I paired mine with the Aquatic Life T5HO Hybrid fixture, and my corals couldn't be happier. Great retrofit... Fluval does a great job with the sunrise / sunset and the T5s are only on for peak times.. 1030-1430. FWIW, my settings:

 

[Havier Salgado]

Would the aqua sky from fluval be enough coupled with a fluval marine And reef 75 g 48"+18"+21"

 

[Havier Salgado]

I have a marine 3.0 on my 75 gallon would like to know if I couple it with an aquasky 3.0 will that be sufficient enough for coral mostly softies such as candy cane cat
eyes zoas gsp and clove polyps

 

[bigcheese]

@Havier Salgado
I didn't get any growth on my candy canes / trumpets and Palys until I put in the T5s.
One thing to note on the Aquasky is the spectrum, too... 6500K tending toward the red end.
That's not going to be great for corals but it should grow algae well. I think you'd want to shoot for 10000K daylight at a minimum, I've been getting great results with a mix of Coral+ / Blue+ at ~15000K.

 

[Havier Salgado]

So the marine 3.0 isnt good enough for coral

 

[Chad Sepulvado]

I have two 3.0 on a 55 g. The app lets you control each one. I’ve had growth from montis, clams, shrooms etc.. slowly been ramping up settings. I may end up getting one more. Not sure. Going to give it another month or so to check growth progress. I don’t have the whites at 100%. Today I pushed both to 60% , with everything else maxed out.

 

[Chad Sepulvado]

You have to get the 59w or you’re not going to get anything decent.

 

[Austin Case]

Sorry to revamp this thread.

I just purchases one of these lights for my 30 gallon tank. Right now the deepest part to my sand bed is 18".

I wanted to ask those who have similar tank size/ sand depth what settings the are running? I assume this will also depend on what's in my tank.

I'm just running one of the preset modes (deep sea glow) because I have no idea what my tank needs/can take. The only life I have in the tank are a BTA, Condy nem, small/medium Pom Pom Xenia and 2 clowns. The condy is still getting situated and that will probably continue with the new light. The BTA has been stationary fairly high with the original lighting (I assume this will change with the new light) and the Xenia has been in the middle grounds since acclimating and not sure if I will need to move it which I've been leaning towards because I just want to keep a small garden of it and not have it take over my LR.

Sorry for the rambling, the wife is annoyed of all the fish talk.

Any comments are appreciated!

 

[Chad Sepulvado]

I scrapped mine and got ai primes

 

[AlanLikesFish]

Thank you for the information everyone.

I have a Fluval Fresh and Plant 3.0 on my 56g freshwater planted and it does a great job for growing freshwater plants.

I have a 120g marine that has been cycling for the last week and I've been curious if I really do need to spend $500 -1000 on lights to grow coral properly. From what I've seen on Bulk Reef Supply TV, Tidal Gardens and many hours of research it looks like good strong lighting from a T5 hybrid or a good quality LED is the way to go. I like Fluval products because of their warranty, ease of use and price point so that was the influencing factor in going that route. It doesn't seem like they will produce the necessary light for all types of coral but I believe being on the budget that I have it will be the best "lower" end LED to have for a 4ft tank since I can't afford to buy 2 higher quality lights. I think it might be possible to add some T5s to my setup in a few months.

I guess it's also possible to go with a 4 bank of T5s but those don't generally have the ramp up and down controls from what I've read.

 

[Carldaly1982]

Hi does anybody has a good daytime light setting for good coral grow and what should the light setting be of a night ?

 

[Mikeyjuice]

I know this thread is a little old now but I'm wondering if you could put up the lighting schedule.you use running this light. it would be greatly appreciated
thanks

 

[SeaJay]

Thank you for the information everyone.

I have a Fluval Fresh and Plant 3.0 on my 56g freshwater planted and it does a great job for growing freshwater plants.

I have a 120g marine that has been cycling for the last week and I've been curious if I really do need to spend $500 -1000 on lights to grow coral properly. From what I've seen on Bulk Reef Supply TV, Tidal Gardens and many hours of research it looks like good strong lighting from a T5 hybrid or a good quality LED is the way to go. I like Fluval products because of their warranty, ease of use and price point so that was the influencing factor in going that route. It doesn't seem like they will produce the necessary light for all types of coral but I believe being on the budget that I have it will be the best "lower" end LED to have for a 4ft tank since I can't afford to buy 2 higher quality lights. I think it might be possible to add some T5s to my setup in a few months.

I guess it's also possible to go with a 4 bank of T5s but those don't generally have the ramp up and down controls from what I've read.

I already have the Fluvals. It’s what I got as a newb. I just purchased the AL hybrid T5 fixture and am installing the fluvals I already have in that. Then the next time I’m ready for an upgrade, I’ll do the leds. Kind of soften the blow rather than spend a fortune all at once. The short answer to your question is yes, you will end up spending a bunch of money on lights.

 

[art926]

I'm using two of these lights for ~1.5 years, so far so good. It's on NUVO 20 gallons.

As you can see I have a few SPS frags, but, honestly, they were growing very slowly (doubled the size for all that period) and in strange patters. So, I decided to start tweaking the lights, shifting to warmer spectrum and noticed some increase in growth. I honestly didn't know each channel contribution to photosynthesis and could only guess. I was afraid to use too high values for anything as I have a bad experience with burning corals under Kessil. So, I was running both lights only at about 30-40% each channel, except Red (0%) and White (~4 times less than others).
Eventually, I decided to buy Seneye Reef Monitor to use it as a PAR meter. I know, it's not very precise tool, but better than just a naked eye.

So, today I've received it, did some measurements and I was shocked. Where my Stylophora is at the highest position (~6") I get only 80 PAR. And other corals below get even less. I didn't clean the lamps for a while, to be honest, and also the light goes through the NUVO's canopy, which scatters and absorbs some light. So, I've decided to measure what will happen if both lamps are at 100%. It was ~260 PAR at the Stylophora level, just about right. That's my goal now - slowly, week by week increase the brightness and see what happens. At least I'm not afraid of reaching that 100% level now. The giant frogspawn needs to be moved though, of course...
Also, to figure out a contribution of each channel, I did some separated measurements underwater:

(2 lamps!)
Channel______________________PAR
ALL at 100%__________________260
Red (called "Pink" )_______11
Cyan__________________________9
Blue__________________________62
Violet (called "Purple" )___22
White________________________172

I also did some more measurements in the air, fixing one (!) light between two chairs and putting the sensor 6" bellow it. Here is a table I put my data into:

(1 lamp, no water)
Channel_______PAR____LUX____PUR
All at 100%____184____6778___72 %
Red____________7______223_____83 %
Cyan___________6______181_____70 %
Blue___________44_____1577____84 %
Violet__________17_____596_____92 %
White__________120____4380____64 %

So, it's clear how much contribution the white channel has! I thought it's only bright to eyes, but it is actually very high PAR and even though the PUR is lowest, it's still the biggest contributor. It's temperature (white only) is ~7400K, btw. The PAR values are not far from the ones on the box, considering my lights are 1.5 years old and I didn't clean them)
I've also measure my old Kessil 160, just for fun. But reading were very strange. At 6" it was giving me crazy high values >300 PAR and just an inch lower it was almost twice smaller. At minimum brightness, I think... But that's probably expected for a point light, as brightness somewhat proportional to 1/R*R. That's why you have to keep Kessils far above.

My conclusions:
1) To grow corals (LPS or even SPS) you need a least two lights, which is still a cheaper option than buying top brands.
2) You have to use a lot of white to achieve high enough PAR for SPS.
3) The lights are great for shallow tank, but might be useless for too deep cube-like tanks, as they don't seem to have good penetration (very scattered light).
Overall, they are great lights and I'll keep using them. Let's see how long they can last)