Pfo Solaris

Mr.Firemouth

Mr.Firemouth

In Memoriam
I stopped by Nemo's Pets tonight to drop off some Coral Cradles.
Dan will be a new distributor for the local area. These are frag plugs.

While there I viewed his Zero edge tank and Solaris light.
The zero edge tanks need high flow and a good level stand to function properly. He has one dry corner...more flow would correct that. For anyone who doesn't know Zero Edge aquariums are tanks that overflow into a drip pan and return to the sump from there. They are nice if you can place them where you can walk 360 degrees around them. Otherwise I would use the conventional tank and stand.

As far as the light is concerned...I thought it was cool and different for sure! There was literally NO heat transfer! The bulbs were weird though. Half were blue half were white and 4 were green. I guess that is how they achieve their color spectrum. I don't know.

The light is programmable for dusk to dawn and has cloud sequences. These may be programmed in to extend bulb life...again I don't know.

I thought they would be brighter. The light was uniform in intensity from top to bottom. He had shrooms and zoas in there.
Everything was open but not jumping out at you. I want to keep an eye on that system and see how it does over the next couple of months.

Has anyone else seen it and what do you guys think?
 
I saw it last week and meant to mention it. First time i had seen the solaris. For it being LED powered I was impressed. I am not sure it is as good as they claim , but that is from a 5 minute viewing. I will also be watching for that tank to fail or grow crazy.

There was some heat but nothing like other lights.

Frag plugs available local....hmmmm gonna research these baddies.
 
I seen the light and like the idea, but like you I was thinking something a little brighter. With the corals he has in the tank it will be hard to tell. Shrooms usually don't like much light so they will not jump out at you if it is to bright till they adjust to the light, so you cannot judge by them. The zoo's look good, but still cannot tell how well the light was doing.

I would hate to see a price of that light system for a 6' tank
 
they make them for 20k color and 13k and yes lonnie for me and you with 6 foot tanks it would cost us 3400.00 but actually in long run might be cheaper on power bill there supposed to use less power. So if i even think about it i'm gonna wait and see results from it there is a thread started in equipment forum in rc. I'm curious to see if work can't be putting off same radiation that coral need.
 
Not only on the elc. bill but the cost of replacing bulbs too. I thought I seen the bulbs are good up to 5 years. Don't know how true that is.
 
this is what i got from there website about there lights this is there information on it:

PFO Lighting is proud to introduce the Solaris LED Illumination System. The Solaris is the first LED System designed to replace Metal Halide and Fluorescent lighting for the Aquarium Reef Tanks. It has been in development for over two years. It will change the way Aquarists light their tanks from now and into the future.

The current design produces PAR light output levels equal to a 250W MH 20K. It uses 40% less energy than the Metal Halide Fixtures it replaces. The life of the LED's is 50,000 hours, so it almost eliminates metal halide and fluorescent bulb replacements. All heat is radiated up and away from the tank Therefore, it does not heat the water like Metal Halides or Fluorescents. This eliminates the need for Chillers. The room air conditioner needs to work 1/2 as much since the light fixture produces only half the heat of Metal Halides which saves even more energy over traditional lighting methods.

There is a built in microprocessor that controls the Solaris. This not only eliminates timers, but it allows the unit to dim the actinic blue LEDs, white LEDs, Lunar actinic blue LEDs and Lunar White LEDS independently from 0-100%. This dimming capability opens many opportunities. The light can be adjusted from 6.5K to 22K, or anywhere in between, to set the ideal color temperature. Sunrise, Daylight, Cloud Cover, Sunset, and the lunar cycle, can all be set independently.

Coral Growth has been outstanding with the new lights. There is excellent water penetration of the light. Many authors have been testing the units since early May and will be printing their results shortly.
 
50,000 hours is about 11.5 years on a 12 hour photo period

at 40% savings you would more than likely make up for the extra cost of the fixture...especially in a few years when they are no longer the new cool item and they get a realistic price

on top of that, the features mentioned in french's second to last paragraph add a cool factor that justifies a higher price

so all in all it seems like a solid unit


the word on the street is that the point source lighting gives a similar water shimmer to that of MH...is that true?
 
if you go to website it shows that it is good for softies coral up to 24 inches and sps and lps at 18 inches i think.
 
I remember researching it a while ago. The 250 MH lamp that they compare the PAR to was the lowest rated on Sanjay's site. When people do things like that, it always sends up a red flag for me...
 
Well, I'll have some input on LED lighting sometime in the future...Lost Marbles is supposed to be working on my LED lighting array for my pico and is planning all kinds of cool settings for it! :)
 
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