zoomonster
Valuable Member
After some confusion on what shipped when my G5 Pro’s arrived Friday. They all got quickly tested then the Hamilton fixture got ripped off the tank. Needless to say with 7 plugs I recovered some Apex power bar space. I did have limited time so I have not yet figured out how I will ultimately route the wiring. The thought there is where I’m going to stash the 3 large power supplies. Brackets would have been a nice touch. In fairly short order the lights were up and running on the tank and quite pleased overall with a few caveats.
As far as the lights go, they exceeded expectations. The colors, spread and power are great. The shimmer is very subtle and less than halide or IMO just right with no disco. Shadowing is almost nonexistent, and I will go out on a limb and say the coverage/light spread is better than MH’s and T5’s I had. In any case the tank looks far better. The moonlights are phenomenal with of course full phase programming. Very nice shimmer and visual effect that is very realistic and reminiscent of a night dive. I do like that the “smart” fans don’t run all the time (if enabled). I did hear them run briefly and not exactly silent. The lights themselves get a resounding 5 stars.
My biggest complaint is the RMS arms. I thought these were a new and improved version released with the G5 but no they are the old complete G4 kit and 3 adapter kits for the G5. The main issue is the clamp does not work very well and they lean forward. I have a 200g DSA with a pretty standard rimmed top and they just don’t work well. Pretty sure I can resolve the problem with some rubber inserts on the wet side but ridiculous for a product that is already overpriced. And yes, per the instructions I have the wet side spacer in place and the rubber gasket on the outside. Of course, those adhesive rubber gaskets are so old the adhesive comes off with the backing paper if not careful. On a rimmed tank with ~1/2” glass the tightening screw just comes flush with the front of the mount. Anything larger and I would have to think these don’t work.
Moebius I guess gets the job done but really still pretty bare bones. I had a little trouble on setup with Bluetooth errors (right next to the lights), but I finally got everything setup. I like the profiles and used AB+ for now. It took a few tries to get it going because you have to do things in a certain sequence. I did finally get AB+ running 9am-10pm but there are some things I want to tweak that I have not figured out yet. Mostly I want to reduce power and color to bluer over the last few hours of the night vs. the maybe 30m sunset you get by default. I enjoy the more blacklight look for viewing in the evening. They do have a color enhance template that’s pretty good for that. Haven’t figured out if you can run more than one template yet. That unlabeled graph thing they have for tweaking the program really needs some work and of course would be simpler if not limited to a cell phone only.
As far as the lights go, they exceeded expectations. The colors, spread and power are great. The shimmer is very subtle and less than halide or IMO just right with no disco. Shadowing is almost nonexistent, and I will go out on a limb and say the coverage/light spread is better than MH’s and T5’s I had. In any case the tank looks far better. The moonlights are phenomenal with of course full phase programming. Very nice shimmer and visual effect that is very realistic and reminiscent of a night dive. I do like that the “smart” fans don’t run all the time (if enabled). I did hear them run briefly and not exactly silent. The lights themselves get a resounding 5 stars.
My biggest complaint is the RMS arms. I thought these were a new and improved version released with the G5 but no they are the old complete G4 kit and 3 adapter kits for the G5. The main issue is the clamp does not work very well and they lean forward. I have a 200g DSA with a pretty standard rimmed top and they just don’t work well. Pretty sure I can resolve the problem with some rubber inserts on the wet side but ridiculous for a product that is already overpriced. And yes, per the instructions I have the wet side spacer in place and the rubber gasket on the outside. Of course, those adhesive rubber gaskets are so old the adhesive comes off with the backing paper if not careful. On a rimmed tank with ~1/2” glass the tightening screw just comes flush with the front of the mount. Anything larger and I would have to think these don’t work.
Moebius I guess gets the job done but really still pretty bare bones. I had a little trouble on setup with Bluetooth errors (right next to the lights), but I finally got everything setup. I like the profiles and used AB+ for now. It took a few tries to get it going because you have to do things in a certain sequence. I did finally get AB+ running 9am-10pm but there are some things I want to tweak that I have not figured out yet. Mostly I want to reduce power and color to bluer over the last few hours of the night vs. the maybe 30m sunset you get by default. I enjoy the more blacklight look for viewing in the evening. They do have a color enhance template that’s pretty good for that. Haven’t figured out if you can run more than one template yet. That unlabeled graph thing they have for tweaking the program really needs some work and of course would be simpler if not limited to a cell phone only.
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