Tag Archives: AquaBeam

TMC AquaRay NUV 410nm LED

Revised 1/6/19

1380542_595504497173285_1626878484_n TMC AquaRay has finally granted the AquaBeam NUV 410nm LED to be released to the US market. The LED was released to Europe back in 2013 and only to the UK, for quantity control issues. The LED has the same design as the rest of the Solid State AquaRay line, with 5 SemiLED x 410nm near-ultra violet (NUV) didoes, 120 beam angle. It has the waterproof rating of IP67, no fan, shimmer, low carbon output/watts, PWM dimming, and the 5 year full replacement warranty.

20160106_122637

At this point of 2016, American Aquarium Products is the only full service authorized supplier of these LED to the Western hobbyist. The point of a emitter in this range is to enhance the colors of corals, fish, and plants.

TMC States:

“This 410nm wavelength will make corals fluoresce (as well as some other critters and fish) and has been shown to improve the red pigment ratio of certain deep water coral species such as Lobophyllia and Trachyphyllia“.

“The addition of this wavelength makes LED lighting look even closer to natural sunlight, truly the true to nature lighting solution you can buy!”

Resource: AAP AquaRay NUV LED

AquaRayNUV

Since this lighting spectrum is in the far side of the lighting spectrum, which also dips into the UVB range, limited quantity/amounts of the light is suggested.

TMC rates on strip of 5 emitters to light up to 170gals/650 litres, and is best seen when the tank is extra dark, say at night, when daytime lighting is off. The LEDs can be used during day lighting hours, just the recommendations of one strip per 170gals has to be considered for true coloration and amounts of UVB provided.

There are other Ultra Violet LEDs out in other commercial fixtures to date, but nothing up to TMC standards of quality of build, and also as a stand alone fixture. Some marine fixtures do have a couple NUV emitters in their fixtures, but separate controllability is not an option, which is why a separate fixture is preferred.

TMC does not give a rating on how long to run the fixture, say all the way threw the night, so caution is advised for health in mind. Start slow and work your way up and also know, limit amounts of this lighting type (more to the UVB range) actually reach the Earth surface.

TMC NUV with Reef White Combo

Watch your eyes, as it can be quick to try and blind you. UVB is harmful, so consider safety.

The fixture could be considered for reptile use, but keep in mind, it has a purple/blue look and since this is a new technology, reptiles would really need to be watched as far as health, as no reptile UVB LEDs are on the market as of yet.

Standard UVB Fluorescent

NUV Spectrum

Considering the amount of energy used by both fixtures, the NUV could be used as a supplement UVB light, to be ran all day during normal daylight hours for reptiles. For reef tanks, volume of water needs to be considered. The supplement light can be ran all day on 170 gals of water.

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Posted in Aquarium Lighting, Uncategorized

Tagged AAP, American Aqaurium Products, AquaBeam, AquaRay, Aquarium Lighting, corals, freshwater, LED, near ultra violet, NUV, PAR, PUR, Reptile, review, saltwater, spectrum, tank, TMC, ultima, UVB

TMC AquaBeam 2000 HD Ultima NP Review

Posted on July, 2 | 8 comments

Last Revised 1/7/2019

TMC has released their newest high end offering of LED Lighting.

The picture to the left demonstrates the difference between the 2012 Reef White 1000 and the new Reef White 2000.

This Reef White 2000 borrows much from the Ocean Blue NP 1500 in that it uses the same exact emitters with one important difference. These emitters are lensed which make them focused for more depth penetration.
This is kept from the 1000 series tiles which the 2000 series is set to replace.

The 1500 series are meant to have a wider footprint of 24 inches by 24 inches from an 8 x 8 tile. The 2000s project a 18″ x 18″ light footprint from a standard/common mounting height of about 6 to 8 inches above the water.

As before with the 1000 series and this Reef White NP 2000, it’s the better choice for for a deeper aquarium over the Ocean Blue NP 1500.
As a generalization, the Ocean Blue NP 1500 would be the choice for wide light spread or an aquarium under 20 inches. The Reef White NP 2000 would be suggested for any depth where very concentrated light is needed, such as a high light requiring sps coral or in a general reef aquarium from 20 to 30 inches or even much deeper with correct specimen placement.

To the left is the Osram Oslon “Nature Perfect” blue reef emitter spectrograph.

One important feature the 2000 borrows from the 1500 Ocean Blue is the Osram Oslon NP Blue emitters.
These are the first emitters developed specifically for the use in Reef aquariums which provide the best over all PUR for your reef inhabitants. Early results also have shown less undesirable algae growth with the use of the Osram Oslon NP Blue emitters too.

It’s important that I noted PUR and not PAR as PUR is the photosynthetically useful radiation (useful light) versus PAR which can still have plenty of useless light energy, especially if yellow, green, or warm white emitters are used (& to a lessor degree, cool white emitters).
This is common with most aquarium LED fixtures since while they utilize Cree and other quality emitters, these are still from common general emitter bins that are not specifically designed for aquarium use. In fact aquarium use is but a minor use of these emitter bins and why multiple color emitters are required in a shotgun approach to achieve a good color balance. This results in wasted light energy in nanometers that are not of optimum PUR.

This is the case in some of the more popular but often over rated LEDs on the market.
Please reference these articles:

PUR versus PAR in Aquarium Lighting
Aquarium Lighting; Complete Information

QUOTE from the first article:
“Here are three examples using PAR reading directly under the lights:

* SB Reef Light PRO 32. This is rated at 363 watts input energy with a PAR of approximately 881 (100%) at 400mm of air.
This comes to .41 watts of input energy per 1 PAR

* Kessil A150. This is rated at 90 watts input energy with a PAR of approximately 325 (100%) at 400mm of air.
This comes to .27 watts of input energy per 1 PAR

* AquaRay Reef White NP 2000. This is rated at 30 watts input energy with a PAR of 380 at 400mm of air.
This comes to .08 watts of input energy per 1 PAR

* Finnex Planted 24/7 20 inch model. This is rated at 15 watts input energy with a PAR of 61 at 400mm of air.
This comes to .24 watts of input energy per 1 PAR”

What TMC also now doing as far as construction of their LEDs is standardization of lighting types and dropping a few less popular lights such as the Marine White 1000.
TMC’s reason stated by people I know in the industry, is lower prices while still maintaining the quality of the world leader in LED aquarium lights.

As well, TMC is continuing to utilize the best possible drivers and PWM (“pulse width modulation”) technology which is superior to “current reduction” which most all other LED controllers use.
With PWM, there is NO change to the spectral output when changing voltage either up or down (dimming or ramping up your LEDs).

Specifications:

Please note that these specs are preliminary. As of the time of posting this article, I will update this article should there be any more changes.

Utilizes these emitters

(4) x 9,000K extremely high output NEW patented Ocean White XT-E LED
(2) x “Fiji Blue” XT-E LEDS (deep blue),
(4) x NEW “patent pending” NP full spectrum Blue (“Nature Perfect” from Osram Oslon) LED emitters

PAR 380 uEinsteins/sec/m2 @15 inches
Overall Color Temperature 20,000 K
Total Power Consumption 30 watts @ 700 mA

TMC AquaRay Reef White 2000 PAR
Professionals say you only need 150 PAR with high PUR LED lighting. Keep clams, grow sticks, SPS… Grow anything you want! Plug and play right out of the box with no adjustments.

PAR ratings were taken from Pacific Northwest Marine Aquarium Society Forum (PNWMAS) official PAR tool.

The difference from PAR vs. PUR

The ONLY ONLINE FULL SERVICE Seller of this industry leading LED (beware of a clearance seller out of a home with an official sounding name and URL):
Reef White 2000 LED from AAP

New TMC AquaBeam 600 Ultima Aquarium LED Light

Posted on December, 19 | 4 comments

TMC has a newer series of 600 series LED Aquarium Lights;

The AAP AquaBeam 600 Ultima LED from TMC

Revised 1-8-19

A friend loaned me one for testing and while this article is based on preliminary results, I am now quite happy with the results as of the latest update.

Here is List of Specifications along with some editorial comment:

FOR THE REEF WHITE: (4) Blue 465nm and (4) Ocean White 10K patented Cree ML-E emitters

18K overall color temperature

Approximate max PAR depth penetration for high light need specimens; 400mm (16 inches)
Editorial: This LED fixture should be OK for 24 inch deep aquariums, however specimen placement for high light specimens should be 16 inches or less

120 degree lens.
Editorial: Similar Light spread to XP-E and XP-G Cree emitters, which also are not best past 24 inches of water)

Utilizes new Cree ML-E emitters rated at 1.6 watts per emitter. These emitters allow for more voltage variance with high energy output per watt used.
Editorial: These new emitters seem to run even cooler than earlier emitters with a voltage variance that likely will be less sensitive to voltage spikes that moisture in an aquatic environment can cause.
These may be the answer to the occasional failure of the first emitter in about 5% of previous versions of the #600

Utilizes standard TMC Mounting Options except for female Teflon screw/bolt receptacle.
Editorial: While there are many TMC and DIY mounting options available, most without additional purchases of parts, I disagree with the elimination of this one option by TMC

Here is a simple picture that essentially show light energy penetration through two layers of white computer paper.

One shows the AquaBeam 600 XR-E Reef White with proven excellent results against the new AquaBeam 600 Ultra ML-E Reef White.
This is the exact color difference utilizing a Reef White 600 and a Reef White 600 Ultima; each wrapped with two layers of computer paper, then placed the maximum optimum PAR distance (400mm) over more computer paper.

What I find interesting & did not expect is the new “600 Ultra ML-E Reef White” produced slightly more brighter white light with a higher percentage of blue emitters than the previous model.

The new 600 Ultima ML-E series is different from the previous series.

*The Marine White now utilizes (2) Blue ML-E along with (6) 10K ML-E Daylight (Ocean White) to obtain the 14K the previous version produces with only 14K XR-E emitters.

*The new Marine Blue has only (2) 10K ML-E emitters with (6) Blue ML-E emitters to produce approximately 20K

See this picture to the left for TMC published Spectrographs and information (click to enlarge).

In Summary;
These are early test results, I will test these lights further and more importantly, continue to consult with aquarium maintenance professionals and their experiences with these new LED Lights, as I do for ALL my articles.
These results will be posted as time goes on via future updates.

For further in depth Aquarium Light Information:
Aquarium Lighting Information

For those interested in aquarium disease prevention, this is the best article on the subject of the use of Aquarium UV Sterilizers:
UV Sterilizer Use; Aquarium or Pond

4 Comments

Posted in Aquarium Lighting, Aquarium Maintenance, Uncategorized

Tagged AquaBeam, AquaBeam 600 Ultima, Aquarium LED Light, Aquarium LED Lighting, Aquarium Light, Aquarium Lighting, Cree ML-E, Cree ML-E emitter, ML-E emitter, New AquaRay, New TMC Light, Reef Light, Reef Lighting

Tag Archives: AquaBeam

TMC AquaRay NUV 410nm LED

TMC AquaBeam 2000 HD Ultima NP Review

New TMC AquaBeam 600 Ultima Aquarium LED Light

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