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ADA Aquasky LEDs Hands on experience

viktorlantos

viktorlantos

Aquascaper
Joined
25 Oct 2008
Messages
1,598
Location
Budapest, Hungary
I had a chance to play with these units in the past weeks. I used many other manufacturer's product before, but did not thought I will have new experiences with this.

Before I used Aquasky I used TMC units for over 2 years, Vertex Illumilux units, Aqualigher units, some cheapo LED units, SMD units too. So I believe I have enough experience to compare them with a planted tank viewpoint.

So why this unit shocked me and surprised me?

Aquasky LED is powerful. Strange as it has over 60 LED but none of them high power LED's like Vertex or TMC. But the overall impression is that it is a very balanced light unit.

With this much LED I had a feeling that this is a perfect clone of a T5 lamp. Very balanced light, almost no shady areas. Plenty light everywhere. Colour render is also different than other LEDs.

Yeah there's a little trade off. No shimmering. This is not that hard to accept if you see a lot of LEDs. LED's shimmering and sparkling effect is a bit too much compare to a halide light. After a time this could be disturbing in my mind. Actually I have a little headache if I watch them too much. Does not happen with HQI.

So someone will miss it, I do not have problem with that especially the light we get on the other side and how the tanks looks below that.

Another negative thing is the missing dimmer unit which would be useful with the larger bro.

A single 601 unit with 30W power is already perform well. Actually when I've seen the single unit I thought this is crazy to put a dual 602 unit above a 60cm tank. And I was right. ADA says that a dual unit is equal to a 150W HQI light. For me this looked even stronger. It is ok to put it over on a light demanding tank, as ADA recommend, but this is a light cannon even for me who always live on the bright side :D

Without pushing the brand this LED is really something you need to experience. For me this is the first unit from all the LED what I've seen what is comparable to our favourite T5 and HQI lights. Something at least happened in the LED space in the past 5 years or so.

4x24 over on a 60cm tank @ISO 640

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Aquasky 601 @ISO 400

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As you can see light is almost the same. No hard shadows, green colour render is nice.

Check out this one:

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602 and 601 lights. In the back 4x54W ATI light.....

The brightness is clearly visible.

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The sexiest LED ever. The LEGs looks awesome in real life. As the legs are not fixed you can push that back if you need to do maintenance. It is easy to move.

I have to tell you that this was the first time when I had to shut down one of the unit in the dual version. It was extremely powerful. Will do another test with stems and how it's affect the colours there, but a simple minimal tank is a photon rocket :D

If you have a chance see it for yourself. Pretty different experience than we had before with LEDs. :thumbup:
 
Ah one more shot maybe this is also a good demo. Sorry i captured this in an exhibition. Do not have better photo.

But a pretty good self explanatory demo. 27W PC Solar mini on the left over on a 20 L tank.
150W HQI over on a 60L tank
2x30W Aquasky on a 60L tank
30W Aquasky on a 60L tank.

LED is much stronger there than the 150HQI.

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I shared this topic because this is a new kind of light and wanted to demonstrate where the LED technology is at this time.
 
WOW :wideyed: Awesome lights and stunning pictures. I am jealous as hell.

I am in the process of trying to retro fit LED's to my Trigon 190 but it is a problem with it being a corner tank the side do not run parallel to each other so this unit with its lovely legs would not fit to my tank.

If only there was some way of swiveling or rotating the support legs so I could get it to fit. My missus is not keen on me suspending lights from the ceiling. At the moment I have cut out and removed the ballast from the 190 Multilux lighting unit and am thinking of screwing the TMC Grobeam 1000 ND tile to it and a dual Grobeam 500 strip to the underneath of the front and back lid with the 8 way controller. Its going to be expensive though.

Can I please ask what the cost of this ADA Aquasky LED light unit is, it looks a much easier option if I can get it to fit.

Brilliant post mate keep us all updated.

Thanks,

Steve
 
Cheers Steve,

I have to add that the unit is made by the same precision like any other ADA thing. It means that the Legs blend into the glass from outside. Meet perfectly the edges there, but this was a trade off that the units only works with a fixed mm glass thickness as it stand inside not outside like many other lighting unit does.

Below 60cm units all LEDs support 5mm glasses only.
The 60cm units can work with 5mm and 6mm glasses too.

LED units can be removed easily from the legs, but you will loose the sexy look then what the acrylic mirroring effect add to the whole thing.

On prices please check your local distri - TGM - as prices may be different in other countries.

Ps: here in my country the pricing is fully competitive with TMC prices
 
Looks nice but last thing I want to experience now. Finally moving from these kind of fixtures to suspended light unit. Amount of space for maintenance is much greater without constant banging and moving of light unit.

Shimmer is no issue for some, you can get used to it :)

Missing dimmer, yes they could do something about it at lest manual dimmer at this price tag it would not cost them much.
 
-1 from me for the lack of dimming. Why throw away one of the inherent advantages of LEDs that most other fixtures do have? Dimming would be perfect for managing plant/algae growth.

Price seems reasonable though.
 
I think they balance the light units for their system (tank size, ferts, amount of CO2 suggested, filtration) so there shouldn't be any issues if the tank is run correctly. Yes dimming would be nice but, for now, a basic one that's not overly expensive it's just perfect. This is the one I was waiting for and hopefully I can test it soon and give you my thoughts about it.

Thanks for the review Vik.
 
It's really surprised me that these don't use high output LEDS, it's also surprised me that they don't have a dim function, not that you'd really need them, but you would want to use an LED for what an LED is. Granted they look great, but no shimmer!! again this is why many opt for LEDS. Word on the street is that these are gonna hit the £500 mark...not sure if anyone can back that rumour up??

You can't beat the TMC rigs IMO.
 
It's great that planted tank enthusiasts have more choice now (compared to reefkeepers). TMC Aquarays are starting to seem a bit out of date and less value for money compared to some of these new LEDs coming out (including the Aquasky).

For example, Maxspect have a freshwater version of the Razor, which is much cheaper than 2 or 3 Aquarays plus controllers : -
http://www.maxspect.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=20&Itemid=21&lang=en
http://www.charterhouse-aquatics.co.uk/maxspect-razor-led-lighting-system-120w-8000k-p-9532.html

Then for the control freaks with money to burn there is the GHL Mitras 6000: -
http://ghlna.com/mitras-lx-6100-pendant
German info on the freshwater one: -
http://www.ghl-store.com/alu-leuchtbalken/led-haengeleuchte-mitras/mitras-lx-6000/index.html

Looking forward to some impressions of these somewhen...
 
On shimmering not sure what is your experience with it. For me HQI lights gives a smooth shimmering much nicer to the eyes. Power LEDs are stronger on shrimmering and goes even stonger as you use higher power leds.

I am watching the Solar HQI, the TMC, Vertex (Vertex has more shimmering than TMC because of the 3W power LEDs in it) and this Aquasky. I am not missing the shimmering on this LED after all the Power LED.

But all above the things i have to say this is the first time when a 30W LED was sufficent for a 60L tank. Not sure how much power it will loose within a year, but til today none of the LEDs where energy efficient. Mean we used the similar wattage over on our planted tank than we would with other type of lights. This isn't good. So it's refreshig to see something which looks ok with 0.5W/L power too.
 
LED should have half consumption of what is for T5 or MH so yes 30W should be enough if designed properly and if light spread is not too big. But can be made more efficient if beam angle is right.

Shimmering of MH is smooth as it is just from one source vs multiple sources. I personally can't wait to see that myself soon. Never had MH before...

TMC works too but you need 3 if you want enough light for all kind of plants for 60cm because their spread is 120 degrees. If they would be with lenses of 60-90 angle then 2 would be enough I think. They also do not run at 12W they run 10W+ given Gro500 tile LED specifications and 0.7A powering them. Not sure why they write 12W but could be included power adapter as that once consumes power too.

On TMC Tile 400 they also write 12W which is nonsense it has 4 LED only so it is 8W+ at max.

RAZOR unit looks great for the money if they make it in silver would be even better.

Not sure how much power it will loose within a year, but til today none of the LEDs where energy efficient. Mean we used the similar wattage over on our planted tank than we would with other type of lights.
Click to expand...

High power LED will start to lose after 50000 hours if I recall correctly not sure about SMD LED. Lifetime is 100k hours so 8 hours a day is 30+ years of life. Depends if they opted for cheap SMD crap or something more serous only time will tell how good they are.
 
Yeah i have different kind of experience with LED lifetime.
Just like MH which was expected to 5000hrs. So be realistic they will last long max half of that or even less even in optimal conditions means airconditioned room.

We have over 15 TMC unit too so seeing them daily.

I am not that optimist about lifetime. But if you understand that you will know what you're paying for.

It is not the brand is is the fake lifetime for most light units.
 
Great comparison Viktor. I've been waiting for something like this. When Aquasky was first announced I thought it wouldn't work well since I'm a high power LED man. Wasn't sure that 0.6W per LED would be able to penetrate the 50 or so cm of a 60P. But I thought its ADA so pretty darned sure it will work fantastically.

Now I'm wondering if I should convert my DIYs to higher LED count but with lower powered LEDs. Don't care much about shimmering effect. I'm already running 45W and my red stem plants never seem to turn red even after spamming iron.
 
Yeah shimmering is one thing.

But what i did not like if the lamp has too much shadow. The less power led you use the more shadow you will have. And these shadows are larger more deep than with HQI usually.

So this was the nice thing what i've seen here. Really minimal shadow effect was pretty close to the T5.
This was new to me as i always used branded units where mainly power leds were used.

But man, the dual unit is soooo strong that is painted the elatine carpet to super light green. :D I will give it another try for sure with all stem plants but that's a massive light for this small 60P tank. I see that already how this kicks the reds out from the stems for sure. :D
 
i'm interested in this light and i was wondering if LED user are still the same technology of what you reviewed in 2012
i'm also interest form my new 45cm tank in dennerle scaper's led 24w, but can't find any review on this light
 
Al404 said:
i'm interested in this light and i was wondering if LED user are still the same technology of what you reviewed in 2012
i'm also interest form my new 45cm tank in dennerle scaper's led 24w, but can't find any review on this light
Click to expand...

They do for the Aquasky model. This works pretty awesome to be honest. Sufficient light to any plants with zero LED defects since we're using and selling.
I am always skeptic with LED especially as we burned a lot earlier with some other LED manufacturers. I thought we will face with some issue after 2 years, but nope.
LEDs performing well no decrease in lighting power, no blank or flashing LED. They probably found a good supplier and not jumped to the power led hype when they developed the product.
These LEDs are driven on lower W and since they are using more of them this gives a result of a strong T5.

The latest Aquasky Moon series will get a new LED as i know after 2.5 years of its predecessor.

If i would change one thing that is the kelvin. Planted tanks looks great with it, but a color a bit closer to the current HQI range would be better.
LEDs are usually harsh, sharp, cold no matter where it is coming from. The only exception what i've seen is the Opnova LED which we're using and testing also for over 6 months now. (too expensive by the way)

Maybe that sharp/cold effect only visible when you see the different technologies next to each other. Like T5, HQI and LED.
For eyes probably HQI is still the most relaxing to look at with a good bulb. Then T5 and LED.

Too bad EU will ban HQI this year. :thumbdown:
 
Edvet said:
Any links?
Click to expand...

It's hard to find anything about it. But ADA alerted us that Solars will not be on the market in the EU since this regulation.

So no new shipments will come. EU moves to a more energy efficient way. The problem is that LEDs are not ready yet to overtake the market fully.

Maybe this is a missunderstanding as they are using the RX7S double ended socket which i do not see on the ban list. Will have more info later on.
 
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