Hi - I'm sick of the crap florescent lighting on my tank - it's a 220 so it's pretty deep, and I use black substrate so that ain't helping anything. I want a nice spot-light effect but I don't have money for a kessil. Other options?
Kessil Effect Without Kessel Cost?
- Thread starter spitz006
- Start date
Kessil gets the "effect" from placing all the LEDs on a single chip and putting under one single lens. Any spot light designed in the same manner will create the shimmer. Light strength will play a factor also. You will also need surface agitation to cause the light to refract. Point source light as it is also called. Led spot lights work pretty good.
Not really. I've had a few kinds I've used mostly off Amazon I look for the whitest spectrum I can find. I don't like to warm of a look in the tank. Typically its 6500k. I really like kessils so after a few years of trying to imitate them I just gave up and got them. Ive had mine for about 5-6 years now. You really can't duplicate the effect you may get in the ball park but your still playing little league. I had one fail this last year and I knew it was out of warranty, it's like a year warranty I think, I called kessil tech just to see if there was something I could do. They walked me through a deep cleaning but it was the fan not coming on that was causing it to shut off. The design doesn't really allow for replacement of components which once I had it apart I could see. So kessil offered me a brand new one at half price and 25% off any thing else I wanted at the time if I choose to get the replacement. I just ordered a replacement, I wish I had been thinking about getting back into reefing at the time I would have taken them up on that 25% for a ap9x. When I do set up my reef tank it will be kessil powered. I had just got out of the salt side when kessils were becoming popular (like 15 years ago....oh God I'm old).
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altums85
said you could check out the lominie brand aquarium lights. I tried both sizes I hate them both and they are not all that cheap either. They look like kessils in form but they do not perform like them the shimmer is not as crisp and the color spectrum really will grow some algae.
Here is my 125 fahaka tank. Lit by 3 kessil a160s tuna suns. As you can see the right side of the tank has very little shimmer as that is where the return pump is and has little surface movement. I know the video is terrible sorry. My phone takes terrible pics and videos. I'm not a YouTuber lol