New NICREW HyperReef Gen 2 available on Amazon.

rtparty · Nov 17, 2024

SanFernandoValleyAIOReef said:
Got my 100 , feel like I should’ve got the 150 so I can run them at lower power because it feels kinda hot when I put my hand right under the light , other than that the light looks nice and so does the color and shimmer

This is typical for any almost decently powered LED. I’ve seen people melt their carpet or burn their tables when they place an LED fixture down and turn it on

rtparty · Nov 17, 2024

legionofdoon said:
48x20x20. Everything eventually .

I’d start with 2 of the 150s which should be more than enough. Adding a third won’t break the bank should you ever need one and I’d rather have 3 150s over 2 of the 200s

Skep18 · Nov 18, 2024

rtparty said:
This is typical for any almost decently powered LED. I’ve seen people melt their carpet or burn their tables when they place an LED fixture down and turn it on

Lol, I wanted to hear the fans kick on. I placed the lights on the corner of the open box them came in. Luckily the contents were empty but it melted the foam packaging they came in after just a couple of minutes or so at full power.

Skep18 · Nov 18, 2024

I finally tinkered with my setup and power settings... I'm a little disappointed, not in the lights themselves but more with my expectations versus what reality was. I was hoping with the higher wattage potential from three 200's meant I could use more blues and less whites to achieve similar PAR readings as my Reef Breeders... Unfortunately, if anything, I found the opposite to be true. I had to lower my lights down to around 12in above the water level whereas my Reef Breeders were more like 18in above the water. Additionally, the four T5 supplemental bulbs were higher with the Reef Breeders too. All this to get slightly less PAR in my brightest areas from the Nicrews than the Reef Breeders setup with the Nicrews having a lesser blue color if anything.

With the Nicrews to get 350 PAR at the highest part of my rockwork, My blues are at 100% and my whites are at 60%. With the Reef Breeders, I ran 100% Blues and I think 40% whites (I need to confirm they were not also 60%). The same spot on the rocks was seeing 380-420 PAR with two 32in Reef Breeders Photon V2+ lights and four T5 supplements. My speculation is this is due mostly to the wider lenses in the Nicrews. I'm guessing I get better coverage with the Nicrews despite the Reef Breeders being an array of lights across a panel and these being more pendant-style. Intuitively I would tend to think the panel array would have better spread. But the opposite seems true which, for most applications, I would say favors the Nicrews. The lower parts of the rocks on the edges of my tank would struggle to grow acropora-type coral with the Reef Breeders. I would say the Nicrew lights will let me grow more acros in the darker edges of the rockwork but time will tell.

I'll also add, even after lowering the lights, the inside of my canopy (which is covered) looked MUCH brighter with the Nicrews. Completely subjective but it sure felt brighter up there I assume due to light spill from the (I assume) wider 120* lenses. I don't know what the Reef Breeders lense angles were but I got much less spill with those lights without a doubt. Even with the canopy open, you could be next to the Reef Breeders and not get blinded. The Nicrews feel borderline dangerous to even glance at. They are QUITE bright. Complementary to that, the tank visually looks brighter with the Nicrews despite the PAR readings. Again, I assume wider coverage gives an overall brighter impression inside the tank. I will probably turn the Nicrews up some more in the future but want to make sure I don't burn out all my coral in case I'm missing something.

It feels like the pendant-style applies light quite differently than the array panel does. So I'm not sure single point PAR readings will tell the whole story. I'm also not sure, even if I mapped out a grid of PAR readings on both and tried to replicate my Reef Breeders as best I can, that would be the right move. I'm relying a bit on my personal experience in all this and doing what I feel is the right, conservative thing to do. Time will tell.

Finally, I could be making this up but the colors under these Nicrews feel like they are a bit different in a positive way. I hesitate to say the coloration is better but its different and doesn't feel worse. Maybe the brighter whites are simply illuminating areas I didn't notice before.

Overall, I'm happy with the lights. The internal timer on one of my Reef Breeders had failed in a way that it couldn't keep synced with the controller and the two fixtures would be out of sync if nothing was done. I had to reset the schedule a couple times each morning and a couple times each night to simply keep them in sync with my T5 schedule on Apex and so half my tank wasn't brighter than the other. Buying two $130 modules from Reef Breeders to make then Photon V2+ "Pro" lights and use the app instead of the handheld remote to program them. But I wasn't willing to spend $260 on 6 year old light fixtures. Reef Breeders is coming out with a new line too so its only a matter of time before old parts aren't available. I could have put the outlets on a timer and run them manually but I run whites for a photo period and fade to blues at night. Using a timer wouldn't let me do that. Blah blah. But if not for that, I would probably not have gotten new lights.

Twocorns · Nov 18, 2024

Skep18 said:
I finally tinkered with my setup and power settings... I'm a little disappointed, not in the lights themselves, but I was hoping with the higher wattage potential I could use more blues and less whites to achieve similar PAR readings as my Reef Breeders... Unfortunately, if anything, I found the opposite to be true. I had to lower my lights down to around 12in about the water level whereas my Reef Breeders were more like 18in above the water. Additionally, the four T5 supplemental bulbs were higher with the Reef Breeders too.

With the Nicrews to get 350 PAR at the highest part of my rockwork, My blues are at 100% and my whites are at 60%. With the Reef Breeders, I ran 100% Blues and I think 40% whites (I need to confirm they were not also 60%). The same spot on the rocks was seeing 380-420 PAR. My speculation is its mostly the wider lenses. I'm guessing I get better coverage with the Nicrews despite the Reef Breeders being an array of lights across a panel and these being more pendant-style. Intuitively I would tend to think the panel array would have better spread. But the opposite seems true which, for most applications, I would say favors the Nicrews. The lower parts of the rocks on the edges of my tank would struggle to grow acropora-type coral. I would say these lights will do that better but time will tell.

I'll also add, even after lowering the lights, my canopy, which is normally covered, looked MUCH brighter with the Nicrews. Completely subjective but it sure felt brighter up there I assume due to light spill from the wider 120* lenses. Complementary to that, the tank visually looks brighter with the Nicrews despite the PAR readings. Again, I assume wider coverage gives an overall brighter impression inside the tank. I will probably turn the Nicrews up some more in the future but want to make sure I don't burn out all my coral in case I'm missing something.

It feels like the pendant-style applies light quite differently than the array panel does. So I'm not sure single point PAR readings will tell the whole story. I'm also not sure, even if I mapped out a grid of PAR readings on both and tried to replicate my Reef Breeders as best I can, that would be the right move. I'm relying a bit on my personal experience in all this and doing what I feel is the right, conservative thing to do. Time will tell.

Finally, I could be making this up but the colors under these Nicrews feel like they are a bit different in a positive way. I hesitate to say the coloration is better but its different and doesn't feel worse. Maybe the brighter whites are simply illuminating areas I didn't notice before.

Overall, I'm happy with the lights. The internal timer on one of my Reef Breeders had failed in a way that it couldn't keep synced with the controller and the two fixtures would be out of sync if nothing was done. I had to reset the schedule a couple times each morning and a couple times each night to simply keep them in sync with my T5 schedule on Apex and so half my tank wasn't brighter than the other. Buying two $130 modules from Reef Breeders to make then Photon V2+ "Pro" lights and use the app instead of the handheld remote to program them. But I wasn't willing to spend $260 on 6 year old light fixtures. Reef Breeders is coming out with a new line too so its only a matter of time before old parts aren't available. I could have put the outlets on a timer and run them manually but I run whites for a photo period and fade to blues at night. Using a timer wouldn't let me do that. Blah blah. But if not for that, I would probably not have gotten new lights.

Reefdudes reviewed the light and also made a point that the nicrew is whiter than the xr30s he has, so the nicrew probably has more white diodes than other lights. I wish they made a "blue" Nicrew 200w version, for the extra blue diodes.

jermzisurmom · Nov 18, 2024

SanFernandoValleyAIOReef said:
Got my 100 , feel like I should’ve got the 150 so I can run them at lower power because it feels kinda hot when I put my hand right under the light , other than that the light looks nice and so does the color and shimmer

The gen1 150 r like this as well

Skep18 · Nov 18, 2024

Twocorns said:
Reefdudes reviewed the light and also made a point that the nicrew is whiter than the xr30s he has, so the nicrew probably has more white diodes than other lights. I wish they made a "blue" Nicrew 200w version, for the extra blue diodes.

Yea. After seeing this with two fixtures, being more white than I kinda want, I'm guessing there's a fundamenal barrier here. Blues vs whites, PAR per watt, blue LEDs I'd venture to guess can provide much less than whites. That's an uneducated guess on my part. Would love to see some formal data on it if anyone else knew better. Or maybe my Seneye doesn't pickup blue PAR as well or something, Idk. But to be clear, at "night" when I run blues, I get all the pop and fluorescence I could ever want on both fixtures. It just felt a shame to leave that for a few hours at night versus getting some of that during most of your daytime viewing hours. That said, I believe its a more popular perspective to prefer a less blue look and maybe thats why most fixtures tailor to that.

To solve this, I think I will (reluctantly) replace two T5's I have with some Quanta Meso Blue LED bars. Again, for no real good reason, I'm reluctant to give up T5 bulbs for the old school thought that light is for some reason better than LED's. The T5's seem to blanket the tank a lot more evenly though and that's just due to the nature of all the surface area of the bulb versus emitting diodes.

In the end though, who knows. I do feel the white is probably important for growth. Before changing to these Nicrews the growth on my SPS has really seemed to taken off. Year old frags have matured in to decent sized colonies. I'm just hoping I don't murder everything with the changes as that's been very often my experience in reefing. But I think, at this point, I've learned to expect it and accept that as a natural part of the hobby. Parts need replaced, coral need to eb trimmed or moved to accommodate needs, you wanna try new things in the name of better growth, etc. I just try and learn from it and use my best guess to do what feels like the right thing.

rtparty · Nov 18, 2024

Twocorns said:
Reefdudes reviewed the light and also made a point that the nicrew is whiter than the xr30s he has, so the nicrew probably has more white diodes than other lights. I wish they made a "blue" Nicrew 200w version, for the extra blue diodes.

Deven stated the Nicrew was whiter on AB+ than HIS Radion schedule. So he tweaked the Nicrew AB+ to match his schedule.

With that said, the Nicrew looks a lot like the Radion Pro. You can get both very white or very blue

rtparty · Nov 18, 2024

Skep18 said:
Yea. After seeing this with two fixtures, being more white than I kinda want, I'm guessing there's a fundamenal barrier here. Blues vs whites, PAR per watt, blue LEDs I'd venture to guess can provide much less than whites. That's an uneducated guess on my part. Would love to see some formal data on it if anyone else knew better. Or maybe my Seneye doesn't pickup blue PAR as well or something, Idk. But to be clear, at "night" when I run blues, I get all the pop and fluorescence I could ever want on both fixtures. It just felt a shame to leave that for a few hours at night versus getting some of that during most of your daytime viewing hours. That said, I believe its a more popular perspective to prefer a less blue look and maybe thats why most fixtures tailor to that.

To solve this, I think I will (reluctantly) replace two T5's I have with some Quanta Meso Blue LED bars. Again, for no real good reason, I'm reluctant to give up T5 bulbs for the old school thought that light is for some reason better than LED's. The T5's seem to blanket the tank a lot more evenly though and that's just due to the nature of all the surface area of the bulb versus emitting diodes.

In the end though, who knows. I do feel the white is probably important for growth. Before changing to these Nicrews the growth on my SPS has really seemed to taken off. Year old frags have matured in to decent sized colonies. I'm just hoping I don't murder everything with the changes as that's been very often my experience in reefing. But I think, at this point, I've learned to expect it and accept that as a natural part of the hobby. Parts need replaced, coral need to eb trimmed or moved to accommodate needs, you wanna try new things in the name of better growth, etc. I just try and learn from it and use my best guess to do what feels like the right thing.

Blue LEDs put out a lot of PAR. I believe Nicrew was going for the Radion Pro look and adjustability with these. It wouldn't be hard for them to make a Blue version if they want.

The US reefing scene is all about super blue, blacklight, Grateful Dead look. The rest of the world seems to like much more natural and a whiter look overall.

In the end, you can still get 3 of the 200s and a couple LED bars and only be slightly more than 1 XR30

rtparty · Nov 18, 2024

Skep18 said:
Lol, I wanted to hear the fans kick on. I placed the lights on the corner of the open box them came in. Luckily the contents were empty but it melted the foam packaging they came in after just a couple of minutes or so at full power.

One major misconception about LEDs has been "lack of heat". The LEDs themselves get VERY hot and heat kills them. That is why they need the thick heatsinks or fans to keep them cool.

There are some funny oops pictures out there of people melting things with the LED fixtures

ihateSpirorbids · Nov 18, 2024

does the new mount fit on a 125 gallon rimmed tank? Their old Nicrew ones didn't

Skep18 · Nov 18, 2024

rtparty said:
Blue LEDs put out a lot of PAR. I believe Nicrew was going for the Radion Pro look and adjustability with these. It wouldn't be hard for them to make a Blue version if they want.

The US reefing scene is all about super blue, blacklight, Grateful Dead look. The rest of the world seems to like much more natural and a whiter look overall.

In the end, you can still get 3 of the 200s and a couple LED bars and only be slightly more than 1 XR30

Yea, I'm definitely not unhappy with the lights. Just, for some reason I thought they would pump more blues than they did on my setup. I'm sure there's reasons though why they're made the way they are.

Curiosity drove me to look some more. I thought I'd seen a video comparing Radion Pro vs Blue. I didn't find the one I recalled but the video below shows the two put out roughly the same PAR, especially when you consider how much that number jumps around when you're taking the measurement (at least in my experience). So maybe the more dominant white presence I believe I perceive was a design decision or just how our eyes process the different light spectrums.

Source:

Skep18 · Nov 18, 2024

Must be something with our (or just my) eyes... Doing the obvious and going to the Nicrew site, there's way more blue LEDs than whites...

prowland291 · Nov 18, 2024

I have a 10g IM Nuvo cube and wanted to upgrade to these lights from some random led fixture I have currently.

Will the 100 be enough for soft and lps coral?

Thanks!

oreo54 · Nov 18, 2024

Skep18 said:
Must be something with our (or just my) eyes... Doing the obvious and going to the Nicrew site, there's way more blue LEDs than whites...

Well if you count the red/green that with blue make white the rough ratio would be around 2 blue to one " white".

And white ( lots of eye bright green ) is more stimulating to the human eye than blue/ violets.

Cscultho · Nov 18, 2024

I bought a NICREW about 11 months ago and it already died. Very frustrated. Guess you get what you pay for.

rtparty · Nov 18, 2024

Cscultho said:
I bought a NICREW about 11 months ago and it already died. Very frustrated. Guess you get what you pay for.

Did the light die or the power supply? They had some issues in the past that I could find but Gen 2 looks to have resolved all that.

At 11 months in warranty as well.