What's your experience with Orphek?

[zeszes]

I want to know peoples opinions on Orphek. I bought an OR4 from them and they've genuinely been one of the worst company I've had to deal with. Not for their lights but for their customer service.

Ill try to keep this as short as i can but apologies if i rant. Basically I bought the OR4 early this year to add on to as a supplemental light for my kessils, id heard great things about the pop the blue plus gives. So it was the Ai blades or OR4's for me.

The package shipped to me but got lost in the mail, then orphek didn't want to take accountability for the lost package, they told me i had to wait 2 weeks after the estimated arrival date despite fedex directly telling me it was gone, still had to wait. Then they started ghosting me in live chat when they found out what my order number was. Like, id message them, wed talk and then they'd ask my order number and just go silent. At one point i chatted on my work pc with them, they didn't disconnect the chat but stayed silent for my entire 10 hour shift. They ghosted all of my emails and only when I told them that I was gonna charge back my card before the 90 day window for my bank passed did they finally respond and tell me it was gonna be a while before they had the light in stock to give me and to just wait another month, meanwhile another customer Service rep told me they should expedite it and they'd get it to me by the following week as they had plenty in stock (this was the same day btw). They said they'd include some extra goodies with it light the lens kit and maybe a flashlight or 2 for being so patient.

Basically it took 73 days total to get the light (and only the light, never got the other stuff they mentioned) from the day i ordered, which showed up in a heavily damaged box missing about 80% of the hardware which I ended up just ordering from McMaster to make up for that.

By the end, I left a review on the website to warn others of my experience and try to give an honest review of the light as I received it and the app experience- And well I guess they didn't like the review as it wasnt 3 stars or higher because they removed it.

I reposted again, checked it was there (which it was) and they removed it again the next day. Guess they aren't open to criticisms if they aren't promoting Their product.

Im torn here though, one hand, the pop is very nice, the light is pretty nice all around and it actually complemements the kessil by adding a fair amount of light without really even touching the shimmer and gives me a nice little par boost for my sps and really brings out the colors on just the coral. It fills in overhang shadows but still leaves a lot to enjoy. On the other hand, the app leave much to be desired. Its basically a generic smart home app that they've repurposed for this, the spectrum control suff just straight up doesn't work, you can really only build a schedule and do limited aclimation and moon lights.

In all reality I want to like them because I do love the light itself. It's just hard to bring myself to in the wake of that train wreck

This is both a warning I guess and I want second opinions if I was just a special case.

If your current lights die, I personally wouldn't chance it with orphek if your corals life is on the line from this alone. Wouldn't risk 2+ months without lighting on the promise that "I'll come eventually, just be patient"

So, people that have ordered from orphek (not resellers like Amazon) what has your experience been, because mine has been abysmal to say the least, but again, maybe I was just very unlucky.

 

[cdemoss01]

Ive heard great things among many reef2reef users!

 

[painter1982]

Did the blue plus make your tank look like a deep water blue reef with the kessils or did it just make your corals have that pop?

 

[zeszes]

Did the blue plus make your tank look like a deep water blue reef with the kessils or did it just make your corals have that pop?

I think even the blue plus is pretty heavy in the 460 and 470 chips range and so i think they're less of a deep actinic blue than the Kessils are land somewhere in between their own Sky blue and kessils blue only, but I think the plus comes from the fact they have more violet lights and that's responsible for that pop.
They do have the 350's which i think does reduce the amount of sky blue you'd otherwise get from those higher chips but I don't think they're enough fully offset it or to get really to a nice full acinic blue. on the bright side, they don't really kill the shimmer of the Kessel's and personally I like the color for the fill.

for my tank personally, it depends on the time of the day.
My schedule is for my Kessils to slow ramp from 65% to 85% throughout the day, and it start with little bit of white in there that goes away throughout the day. There's a dip mid day where it goes "cloudy" with the cloud mode for about an hour and sits around 40-50 with more whites, and then it comes back to continue that ramp to 85%, it steadies there for an hour about 3/4 of the way through the day and then ramps back down before the sunset sequence starts.

That being said, the orpheks stay pretty consistent all day. I've noticed that the orpheks wash out the white from the kessils and turn it more of a sky color and drifts into that actinic blue as the whites go away which I don't mind. but all day, the corals get that nice pop from them. they also dominate during my mid day clouds and again, its more what I would except from the sky blues just with waaaay more pop.

I think my big thing I can say I like about them is the kessils do have pop but not enough to really show some of the colors the way I'd like to see them without like kraken glasses, however the orpheks pop is a little gentler and I get to see more of the red and yellow acros that the kessils will otherwise wash out to the naked eye.

 

[X-37B]

I have ran the blue plus and blue sky or3's. Ordered from factory no issues.
I run 3 or4 uv/v bars on my 150. Ordered from the factory.
I run them 100% for 6-7 hrs a day.
They bring the colors and work well with the 2 photon 50's.

Check out the Merridian edge bars. I run 2 14k's on my 112 that supplement the 400 watt halide.