NICREW HyperReef 30 Watts Gen 1 Aquarium LED Reef Light, Dimmable Full Spectrum Marine LED for Saltwater Coral Fish Tanks

OVERALLAn excellent, value light for small saltwater aquariums. I use AI Prime lights for my main tank, but I am swapping all my 'utility' tanks lights out for these.Reviewed with expectations for growing soft corals and anemones in a small tank with minimal cost. I had no expectations to successfully maintain hard corals. It may be able to handle lower light hard corals, but it would be difficult in my small tank.I have used this for 6 months on a 15 gal nano currently acting as my quarantine tank. Permanent residents are Kenya Trees, Ricordia & other misc mushrooms and a Bubble Tip anemone - no permanent fish. The anemone has the highest lighting requirment and it's health is my benchmark.The setup is easy, but getting the mount over any edge or lip can be challenging. I had to cut some plastic rim slots to allow. Rimless tanks shouldn't be an issue.The controls are intuitive with a reasonable amount of intensity levels: 6 each for White / Blue.Everything is thriving with the Blue channel at 3 with the White channel at 1. It gives a reasonably attractive color for viewing. More individual color control would be nice, but unreasonable to expect at this price point.One thing that could be done is to reduce the overall white impact. Even if i set the Blue channel to 6 (Max) the White channel only needs a 2 to provide a balanced output for most reef tanks-IMHO. I didn't count this against the product much, just an area for improvementGOODCostReasonable color renditionAdequate power for soft corals in a small tankEase of UseBADInstallation over a lip may be an issueThe tightening nuts feel flimsy and doesn't match the quality of other parts.

PRODUCT:This is the review for about 2.5 years of using NICREW 150W Aquarium LED Reef Lights. Now, it's very important to understand that I'm writing in regards to my experience with these lights, I'm not comparing them to the lights in a $1.000 range. I purchased these two lights on Dec 1, 2022. After two years both lights are working great!! I have Innovative Marine 100g INT tank (47.3" x 23.6" x 19.7") Two of these lights are more than plenty for the tank with these dimensions. All the LPS and SPS in the tank love it. Aesthetically lights have a very solid build, look great on top of the tank. The lights come with solid metal holders. Altogether the whole light set up looks great!BAD:There are nothing bad about these lights.I would wish is that the next version would have:7 controllable channels instead of two.Each light would have at least one more uv bulb.As of right now the white channel uses tons of bulbs, tons of space and being used at 10-15%.From the engineering stand point it would make sense to reduce the white channel assets and expand on light blue, purple and UV bulbs (at least by 3 bulbs).OPERATION:I use these lights with the NICREW HyperReef Light Controller. The lights are VERY powerful, don't even think about running them at 100%, unless you want to burn everything in your tankI set them up to run for 10 hours daily:One hour to ramp lights up - WHITE at 5% - BLUE at 5%Eight hours for full power of - WHITE at 10% - BLUE at 65%One hour to ramp lights down - WHITE at 5% - BLUE at 5%At this settings the lights work very quietly and do not generate much of heatFIXES:On July 19, 2024 after 2.5 years, controller that was plugged in into the light #2 stopped working. I unplugged the controller and plugged it into the light #1 and controller started working again. So I concluded that the problem is with the light #2. Then Light #2 simply stopped powering on and just occasionally would flash. After some investigation I found out is that the power adapter has failed. I just unplugged the light and plugged it into the power supply of light #1 and light #2 came back to life. So I went to Amazon and purchased "NICREW AC/DC Adapter for 150 Watts HyperReef LED Light". So when you light will fail (all lights will fail eventually), do yourself a favor and connect it to the other light power supply.

The lights and Brackets are well made. The brightness of the lights are excellent . I purchased 2 150 watt for my 90 gallon 48 inch reef tank. I am currently only using a maximum of 65% blue and 45% white currently to see how my corals in my mixed reef react, all is well a week after installation. I would love to give the product a 5 star except for a couple problems . The light bracket would not fit over the edge of my 90g rimmed tank i had to take the adjusting nut off screw to get over tank edge. Near to impossible to put nut back on after bracket is over tank not enough space to hold and thread back on. I never put back on. I used a couple of thin plastic discs to tighten between glass and screw to distribute tension of screw against glass . Be careful not to over tighten it is not necessary. The controller that i purchased works well. Except i found it quite difficult to program and directions enclosed and videos on line are not very specific. I am not real good at tech stuff . I have managed to program 2 separate programs . I will just leave be for now .