Reefi Uno Vs Kessil a360x

Coug92 · Sep 21, 2021

Revmh said:
Thank you!! I couldn't imagine which option you'd be leaning towards.

My goal is to combat shadows, but I do plan to turn the intensity down while verifying with an Apogee 510 - though, good advice is good advice!!

Maybe it's a silly question, because, you know, "you're" Kessil (figuratively speaking). What would the shadowing look like on a 4ft tank with only four A360X fixtures? I'm looking into fill light (t5 or Reef Brites), but if you don't think it would be needed, I'm curious to hear about it.

Either way, thank you for jumping in. I appreciate companies taking an interest in perspective clients.

I have a four foot tank with 2 kessel a 360’s and six t5’s with the AI hybrid set up. I get no shadows and good growth for acros. Mich less cost than what you are considering.

RevMH · Sep 21, 2021

Coug92 said:
I have a four foot tank with 2 kessel a 360’s and six t5’s with the AI hybrid set up. I get no shadows and good growth for acros. Mich less cost than what you are considering.

Beautiful tank! I figured I could get away with less than four A360x fixtures, but I have a spread in mind for my set up. Either way, this set up has clearly worked well for you. Thanks for chiming in and sharing, it looks awesome.

Coug92 · Sep 22, 2021

Happy to help. bRS tv did a great video showing the spread and PAR readings of the a360x.. i was surprised ro see they actually suggested postioning them closer to the edge because there is so much spread towards the middle.

RevMH · Sep 22, 2021

Coug92 said:
Happy to help. bRS tv did a great video showing the spread and PAR readings of the a360x.. i was surprised ro see they actually suggested postioning them closer to the edge because there is so much spread towards the middle.

I saw that, too. It was pretty impressive. They first gave me the idea for four. Kessils are certainly beautiful lights.

Colt13 · Sep 22, 2021

BoneDoc said:
Where do you see them for 550?

without tax they're $544, with tax $577. BRS has them on clearance for 680 then take another 20% off when you add to cart and go to checkout

CaptPatrick · Sep 25, 2021

I have 2 ReeFi Unos. I’d there anything specific you’d like to know? They produce some shimmer, not much of a disco effect, I had AIs on my last tank and it’s much better than them. They are nice lights, look nice my only real issue is the interface, seems like it needs updated, lacking some features that I had with the AIs that I thought were useful.

RevMH · Sep 25, 2021

CaptPatrick said:
I have 2 ReeFi Unos. I’d there anything specific you’d like to know? They produce some shimmer, not much of a disco effect, I had AIs on my last tank and it’s much better than them. They are nice lights, look nice my only real issue is the interface, seems like it needs updated, lacking some features that I had with the AIs that I thought were useful.

Thank you for responding. What you shared is exactly what I was questioning, so I appreciate you jumping in, too. Very nice looking tank!!!

minus9 · Sep 26, 2021

I would do a combo of Kessil and led bars like xho’s if mounted at a normal height or Orpheks if mounted higher with 55 degree lenses on the 360x’s.

Here’s my tank, 360x’s with three OR2 blue plus on the edges (front, left and right side).

As you can see, I went overboard, but that’s okay.

RevMH · Sep 26, 2021

minus9 said:
I would do a combo of Kessil and led bars like xho’s if mounted at a normal height or Orpheks if mounted higher with 55 degree lenses on the 360x’s.

Here’s my tank, 360x’s with three OR2 blue plus on the edges (front, left and right side).

As you can see, I went overboard, but that’s okay.

Wow. Great looking tank. I really appreciate the advice and wonderful picture!

jtichenor · Sep 27, 2021

Here's a couple pics from a 90 (48x18x24h) right after I upgraded the lights on this tank to Unos. They are ~9" above the tank. Par with these two Unos set to ~121 watts at peak is 400 @ 6" under the light, 350 @ 10" in the center of the tank, 200 @ sand in the center of the tank, 150 @ sand in the corners. Full power is 180 watts each.
I just bought 4 more of these lights for a 48x35x20 tank I'm about to set up.

RevMH · Sep 27, 2021

jtichenor said:
Here's a couple pics from a 90 (48x18x24h) right after I upgraded the lights on this tank to Unos. They are ~9" above the tank. Par with these two Unos set to ~121 watts at peak is 400 @ 6" under the light, 350 @ 10" in the center of the tank, 200 @ sand in the center of the tank, 150 @ sand in the corners. Full power is 180 watts each.
I just bought 4 more of these lights for a 48x35x20 tank I'm about to set up.

Very cool - thank you for sharing! Tank is looking really nice. Thanks to every here along with Daniel, I finally decided on and purchased the Unos. Looking great so far.

Dukereefnz · Dec 14, 2021

I have been looking at 2 xA360X and 4 x T5 fixture, or 2 x A500X mounted high for my 36 x 24 x 24 tank. But after reading this thread I am thinking Reefi Duo. Looks Like I will only need one! 48'' spread - I need 36.

Would you add this to an Aquatic life T-5 hybrid 4 bulb fixture? Over kill?
New tank - not sure what I will grow but I need to set it up now... while i have some cash... if you know what I mean.

1 x Aquatic T5 fixture plus 2 x A360X
2 x A500X
1 x Reefi- Duo
1 x Reefi - Duo plus Aquatic life T5 fixture

What would d you choose?

RevMH · Dec 14, 2021

Dukereefnz said:
I have been looking at 2 xA360X and 4 x T5 fixture, or 2 x A500X mounted high for my 36 x 24 x 24 tank. But after reading this thread I am thinking Reefi Duo. Looks Like I will only need one! 48'' spread - I need 36.

Would you add this to an Aquatic life T-5 hybrid 4 bulb fixture? Over kill?
New tank - not sure what I will grow but I need to set it up now... while i have some cash... if you know what I mean.

1 x Aquatic T5 fixture plus 2 x A360X
2 x A500X
1 x Reefi- Duo
1 x Reefi - Duo plus Aquatic life T5 fixture

What would d you choose?

It'll all depend on what corals you'd like to grow. Softies and LPS would probably be fine with any of the above combinations.

Regarding SPS, I haven't used most of the aforementioned options. I'm using the Reefi Uno fixtures. I think they're great and would recommend them over the Duo. They have more output, a better diode combination (my opinion), and you're free to move the fixtures around.

In the end, I opted for four Reefi Uno fixtures, four t5 (two Blue Plus and two True Actinic) (Noopsyche Hybrid to mount the LEDs and t5s), and four LED strips (Chinese version with a custom layout and upgraded drivers). Is it overkill? Absolutely! But this allows me to turn the LEDs down and keep wonderfully even spread.

minus9 · Dec 14, 2021

Dukereefnz said:
I have been looking at 2 xA360X and 4 x T5 fixture, or 2 x A500X mounted high for my 36 x 24 x 24 tank. But after reading this thread I am thinking Reefi Duo. Looks Like I will only need one! 48'' spread - I need 36.

Would you add this to an Aquatic life T-5 hybrid 4 bulb fixture? Over kill?
New tank - not sure what I will grow but I need to set it up now... while i have some cash... if you know what I mean.

1 x Aquatic T5 fixture plus 2 x A360X
2 x A500X
1 x Reefi- Duo
1 x Reefi - Duo plus Aquatic life T5 fixture

What would d you choose?

I'm a huge Kessil/T5 fan myself. T5 gets you the absolute coverage you need and the Kessil's break up the flat look that you get from T5's and provides enough shimmer. My 22g nano had the best colors under T5/Kessil. I have no experience with the Reefi Duo, but I've read good reviews about them. I think if you're leaning towards heavy sps, then the 500x is the way to go in that deep tank, but if you're placing a handful of sps at the top of the scape, then 360x's will do the job nicely. I'm sure you'll be fine with either light paired with T5's though.

RobB'z Reef · Dec 14, 2021

Revmh said:
Hello!

I am in the market for a new light set up for a 4ft tank. Currently, I am debating between 4 Kessil a360x fixtures or 4 Reefi Uno fixtures. I'd set them both up with the Reef Brite Quads.

This will be a lot of light and will need to be dimmed, but the plan is to have some solid coverage.

Does anyone have pictures/videos of the Kessil and/or Reefi Uno? How do they look, what's the shimmer like on the Uno (Kessil is certainly strong here), how's the spread?

I'm hoping to gather feedback which can help guide me in the right direction. I appreciate your time!!!

I got 4 kessils originally over my 180 and I am very much NOT a fan of Kessils at all after having owned them. I recently (about a couple months ago) added two ReeFi Uno's in the mix along with the Kessils as an experiment to see about replacing them. What I have found is that 1) The Uno's are WAY better in spread and power. The spectrum is also much wider. They do oddly enough compliment the Kessils quite well it seems, making up for some of what I don't like about them. The Uno's on their own are quite purple in visual appearances, enough so that it's quite noticeable. I've offset this so it's no longer an issue with the blues on the Kessils. The Uno's don't have a lot of shimmer, there's some but it's not in your face like the kessils. The shimmer from the Kessils still comes through when paired up with the Unos but it's tamed down a bit which is great, because before it was too much and they were just spot lights that poorly distributed light in the large tank IMO.

I'm on the fence if I'm going to completely replace all of them with Uno's or not as since then coral growth has taken off for me as to before it was quite underwhelming. You really can't beat the price of ReeFi, they are powerful and the app is easy to work with AND you don't have to buy a stupid dongle to access all the features in the light. WiFi connection is built right in and it's a breeze to setup. Overall I'm very happy with the direction I've gone so far. If i had to do it all over again I'd probably go with the Duo (ive heard it's less purple) and maybe that's it. Uno's -> Power/Spectrum and Spread + price beats everything. Kessils -> Shimmer... um that's it. They are over priced and suck on their own I think.

RevMH · Dec 14, 2021

Rob.bucek said:
I got 4 kessils originally over my 180 and I am very much NOT a fan of Kessils at all after having owned them. I recently (about a couple months ago) added two ReeFi Uno's in the mix along with the Kessils as an experiment to see about replacing them. What I have found is that 1) The Uno's are WAY better in spread and power. The spectrum is also much wider. They do oddly enough compliment the Kessils quite well it seems, making up for some of what I don't like about them. The Uno's on their own are quite purple in visual appearances, enough so that it's quite noticeable. I've offset this so it's no longer an issue with the blues on the Kessils. The Uno's don't have a lot of shimmer, there's some but it's not in your face like the kessils. The shimmer from the Kessils still comes through when paired up with the Unos but it's tamed down a bit which is great, because before it was too much and they were just spot lights that poorly distributed light in the large tank IMO.

I'm on the fence if I'm going to completely replace all of them with Uno's or not as since then coral growth has taken off for me as to before it was quite underwhelming. You really can't beat the price of ReeFi, they are powerful and the app is easy to work with AND you don't have to buy a stupid dongle to access all the features in the light. WiFi connection is built right in and it's a breeze to setup. Overall I'm very happy with the direction I've gone so far. If i had to do it all over again I'd probably go with the Duo (ive heard it's less purple) and maybe that's it. Uno's -> Power/Spectrum and Spread + price beats everything. Kessils -> Shimmer... um that's it. They are over priced and suck on their own I think.

I agree! I ended up with the Uno fixtures. I'm very happy with them. There's a lot of purple, but I'm not running them at 100%, so diali g back was no issue.

RobB'z Reef · Dec 14, 2021

Revmh said:
I agree! I ended up with the Uno fixtures. I'm very happy with them. There's a lot of purple, but I'm not running them at 100%, so diali g back was no issue.

it was kinda funny, after i replied to the post i noticed how old it was, sorry! Yeah, you can for sure adjust them so they aren't so purple but you can't beat them for the price considering they perform as good or better than most of the over priced high end ones out there.

RevMH · Dec 14, 2021

Rob.bucek said:
it was kinda funny, after i replied to the post i noticed how old it was, sorry! Yeah, you can for sure adjust them so they aren't so purple but you can't beat them for the price considering they perform as good or better than most of the over priced high end ones out there.

No worries. I love the assist, regardless of time. I've been pretty impressed with the Uno fixture. Nothing but good things to say about the lights and their inventor.