NICREW HyperReef 150W Gen 1 Aquarium LED Reef Light, Dimmable Full Spectrum Marine LED for Saltwater Coral Fish Tanks

Ended up upgrading when Gen 2 came out, but had this until then. Amazing and grew corals extremely well and definitely worth the money as other brands cost much more for the same thing. Never had a problem with this and super easy to setup and even better with the controller.

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.

100 Watt Version:The set-up was easier than I had expected, and the bracket was more sturdy than I was expecting! It only took me about 10-15 minutes, alone.Output:I have the height of the mounting bracket at max above the tank.I did buy the programmable controller, which works great and was easy to figure out.At 15% white & 50% blue, I get 120 PAR on the sand bed, which is 24” below the water top.At 15% white & 100% blue, I get 200 PAR on the sand bed.I played with the white to blue ratio to see what I liked best, and that was 15% white.I’m going for softies and some LPS, so 15% white and 50% blue is ideal. On my aquascape, I range from 80 to 160 PAR, depending on placement. Perfect!I mapped the PAR of the tank in the attached photo.If you wanted SPS, this light would still work. 200 PAR on the sand gave me enough on most of the aquascape for SPS. You could crank up the white for more power, if needed. It might be a better bet to get the 150 watt version though.I only gave it 4 stars, because I can’t speak of reliability and longevity yet. It’s only been a couple days.Edit (12/14/2024): I’ve had this for a year now, with no issues. In fact, I upgraded to a larger tank and added a 2nd light.The only complaint is from personal preference: the yellow or warm white LEDs give a muddy look in my opinion. I simply painted circles over the lenses to block the yellow light.If I’m not mistaken, the Gen 2 version allows you to control the individual colors independently, thus this would be a non-issue.

I have 3 Nicrew Reef Lights, two 100 watts and one 150 watt. All have had the AC/DC power adapters go bad. When this happens you might think it's the light itself, but if you swap the light to the good adapter (of the proper wattage) you'll find the light is fine, it's the adapter. A VOM on the output of the adapter further confirms it. The light itself is good, puts out decent color which can be controlled with 5 step levels each for the white and blue channels. It's no Radion, but they grow SPS, clams and everything else in a mixed reef fine, and the blues make the colors pop reasonably well. The Radions can make the colors glow more, if that's your thing. And if you want more control you can get their spectral controller, which is widely derided as being difficult to use - but I haven't tried it myself since I have a similar Kessil controller that worked, and is much more inuitive supposedly (I never needed a manual - manuals are for suckers lol). If only the power adapters didn't fail, or they weren't so expensive (near $50 for the 150 watt, available on Amazon). Also you can't find the voltage/amperage combination with generic adapters, the Nicrews require some oddball spec, so you are stuck buying the replacement adapters through them. Like ink for printers, it must be Nicrews business model to make money off of the power bricks. Boo! Think I'll knock off another star - writing this review is souring me even more on these lights.