Aqua Medic has been on a tear lately, adding product after product to their ever growing line of marine and freshwater aquarium equipment. Their latest piece of gear is a pair of LED fixtures that fall under the name of aquasunLED. While this is Aqua Medic’s first production LED fixture that we know of, it’s not their first foray into the technology as they’ve had a line of PAR38 based aquasunspot LED lamps for a while now. So what kind of features does the aquasunLED bring to the table? For starters, it is a sleek, low-profile fixture packed with a ton of diodes.
The aquasunLED fixture is divided into two or three separate LED arrays (depending on the model) with each sporting 50 LEDs at 1watt each. The massive array of diodes is broken down into two colors options, and each module contains 15 blue and 35 12,000K white LEDs. The resulting light is said to be around 14,000K which is a nice white with a noticeable blue hue. According to Aqua Medic, the two different LED colors are separated into four distinctly controllable channels for the white LEDs, blue LEDs, moonlight and cloud movement.
Two models of aquasunLED will be available, differeing only in the length and number of LEDs on board. The larger of the two fixtues, called the aquasunLED 150watt, measures 49.0″L x 14.2″W x 2.2″H and has three of the 50watt LED arrays. The shorter fixture, or aquasunLED 100watt, comes in a bit shorter at 33.25″ long but shares the same width and height. It has only two of the 50watt LED panels. As for the fixture’s housing, the body is made from powder-coated and saltwater resistant aluminum. And with the overall height of the fixture being just a little more than 2″, there’s no room for fans to actively cool the unit’s internals, so Aqua Medic had to rely on passive cooling.
Controlling all of those LEDs is an on-board programmable computer that doesn’t just control when the lights turn on or off. Instead, the controller has the ability to dim the LEDs, run a cycle for the moon phase, and even simulate cloud cover. In addition to the built-in computer, the aquasuneLED has a USB connection that allows users to connect a PC to the fixture to change any of the 10 pre-programmed lighting modes. This is accomplished by a software interface called “DimEdit”, which doesn’t require installation onto a computer.
That about sums it up for the new aquasunLED fixtures from Aqua Medic. We haven’t been told a price point for either model and we’re not sure when they will be made officially available to the public, but we’ll be sure to dig up that information as soon as possible.
