Hi All,
So as promised I decided to go for the 742mm Freshwater Pro Arcadia T5 LED's for my Juwel vision 180. So after about 2 months burn in time I thought I'd give a review on them based on my experience.
As mentioned earlier I decided to go for a hardscape only setup for now, so the lights are being used purely for aesthetics purposes as I am going for a South American biotope feel. Nott looking to grow any plants as of yet however I may add some floating type plants in the future(if you guys have any suggestions let me know), but as for now i'm enjoying the growth of algae on the driftwood and rocks; creates a more mature look I feel. So honestly I couldn't tell you how well these lights perform at growing plants or any demanding types like ludwigia.
I have my lights fitted on my existing Juwel t5 unit and the tubes I picked up off Swell UK are to be used specifically for the Juwel units, however they do offer other lenghs and colours for normal T5 units.
The lights definitely deliver when it comes to brightness, sometimes I wish I could tone it down or have a phase in/down feature especially with my Rummy Nose Tetra's going absolutely barmey when I turn the lights off but no complaints in that department. With some surface agitation created by the filter outflow the LED's create a subtle shimmer affect which is exactly what I was excited about when discovering these tubes. The shimmering is probably not as vivid as you would probably see with the dense matrix LEDs inside Kessil lights however they are enough to satisfy my needs.
Great build quality with these tubes as once fitted on, they have a wide adjustment range allowing you to set the preferred direction of light with a clicking feature a lot like the bezel on a divers watch. Slight annoyance is that the packaging claimed a waterproof seal, however I have noticed condensation can build up within the tubes from time to time, which you can't do much about, but any exterior water marks created from splash backs is wiped down everytime a big water change is carried out.
At the time I came across these lights the Juwel multilux T5 LED tubes were not available to me otherwise I probably would have gone for them as apparently they're slightly cheaper than the Arcadia's so I had no choice and picked these up for £31.99 from Swell UK. I have come across them in the later versions of the Juwel visions recently and they don't look much different at all so once my current Arcadia tubes blow out I'll give the Multilux tubes a go.
But as for now these Tubes are doing my tank well.
If you guys have any questions, I'll try my best to answer them for you.
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