Mars Aqua Chinese LED review (Ebay)

d-man said:
My tank is 32" wide. As far as par, meh, doesn't mean much in terms of leds. But yes, low light corals for sure will go on the bottom.
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32" wide and 43" tall! Wow, can we see a pic of it? I would love to follow a build thread on it
 
There is a partially complete build thread with terrible pics in the large tank forum. I can't operate photobucket very well since Im a tech moron.

Swope2bc said:
32" wide and 43" tall! Wow, can we see a pic of it? I would love to follow a build thread on it
Click to expand...
 
Would you guys run 1 Kessel 350N or 2 Mars Aqua? I bought a used Kessel 350N (narrow optics 70 degrees) . It's a nice unit but there are dark spots in my 24x24x12 tank. I should of bought the wide lense. Instead of buying another used one I could sell the one I have and buy 2 Mars Aqua.
 
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C Dog said:
Would you guys run 1 Kessel 350N or 2 Mars Aqua? I bought a used Kessel 350N (narrow optics 70 degrees) . It's a nice unit but there are dark spots in my 24x24x12 tank. I should of bought the wide lense. Instead of buying another used one I could sell the one I have and buy 2 Mars Aqua.
Click to expand...


Depends what you like.. One Mars Aqua will be sufficient if you choose it.
 
I kinda like the idea of running 2 Mars at lower power setting or would 2 be a complete over kill?
 
Ok Isaac, so used a different soldering iron and it worked very well and pretty easy. I replaced 4 of the 6 reds with uv, the greens with pure whites and the warm whites with 10k diodes.
1 fixture down, 3 more to go
 
d-man said:
Ok Isaac, so used a different soldering iron and it worked very well and pretty easy. I replaced 4 of the 6 reds with uv, the greens with pure whites and the warm whites with 10k diodes.
1 fixture down, 3 more to go
Click to expand...

Sweet DMan! Glad it worked better by switching soldering irons. I baught one from ebay that was like 7 dollars and I'm surprised it worked as well as it did. Post some pictures when your done!
 
d-man said:
Ok Isaac, so used a different soldering iron and it worked very well and pretty easy. I replaced 4 of the 6 reds with uv, the greens with pure whites and the warm whites with 10k diodes.
1 fixture down, 3 more to go
Click to expand...
Could you point me in the direction of the violet diodes you bought for this? I'm getting a fixture and am going to replace some cool whites with royal blue and the greens with violets, any help is appreciated I couldn't find appropriate royal blues either
 
He linked to some random 3W diodes. Not a problem, but he also justifiably recommended diodes by Epistar or Bridgelux. All of them are all over eBay. This is who I bought from. As you can see, you can select your wavelength. Anything under 400nm is considered UV. I choose to go with actual "violets" and selected 420nm. But all are available.

If you truly want UV, I'd make sure to check out the wavelength being advertised. Many sellers use the term UV for stuff 400nm+ example. Also many come already soldered onto a star board. If you really want those particular diodes for whatever reason, you could easily unsolder them just as you unsoldered the ones off the MarsAqua fixture. Heck, you could probably just leave them on the starboard and use a little thermal paste to secure it to the MarsAqua fixture.

Here's some cheap ones that get into the ultraviolet spectrum. If you want something deeper into UV, they're available in the first link I posted.
 
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Firebirdude is completely right. A lot of sellers do sell leds that say UV for 400nm+ this doesn't bother me because I know UV is under 400nm and I'm just looking for the specific wavelength. I baught 5 of the 405nm leds and I wish I would have gone with a little higher wavelength like 420nm. The reason I say is because anything lower than 400nm is really hard to see. Don't get me wrong, you can still see visible light with 405nm, but it's hard to see it in my tank. It's not as visible as like 420nm. Anything under 400nm starts to slowly be invisible light all the way to about 320nm anything lower than that we can see at all. So just a heads up when you buy True UV and are disappointed because you can't see it all that well and it's not what you expected. Plus UV is really not that good for us to look at for our eys. That's why you see UV sterilizers inside black pvc to hide the light.

So just a heads up and something to think about.
 
I picked up 10 420-435 and a couple packs of royal blue, I can't stand the green or regular blues, anyone have documentation proving we need the regular blue spectrum? I know fresh plants can use the 460-465 but don't corals prefer 450? Or rb

How is everyone's fixtures holding up?
 
d-man said:
Ok Isaac, so used a different soldering iron and it worked very well and pretty easy. I replaced 4 of the 6 reds with uv, the greens with pure whites and the warm whites with 10k diodes.
1 fixture down, 3 more to go
Click to expand...

thats cool...let us know how the colors are when your done ...just wondering if it really makes a difference
 
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