A glance at the new Apollo Reef LED SolarBlast Sunburst 4000

By Brian Blank on Sep 18, 2012

The Apollo Reef LED SolarBlast Sunburst 4000 is a relatively new manually dimmable LED fixture looks a lot like other black box LED fixtures on the market. But as with other lighting manufacturers we’ve seen, the proof is behind the scenes in the LEDs and circuitry the manufacturer has chosen to set it apart. The Apollo Reef LED series of lights are all built off the same box as their previous fixtures but are using Bridgelux LEDs and other customizations under the hood to achieve a different kind of lighting and color.

First off, if you have heard of the company before, the SolarBlast Sunburst 4000 replaces the standard fixture that was non-dimmable adding manual control knobs on the light to adjust the blue and white channels. The Sunburst 4000 uses a unique blend of royal blue and 420nm actinic purple LEDs on the ‘blue’ channel and 4000K white with four 660nm red LEDs on the ‘white’ channel.

Adding this red pop and lower temperature white LEDs is a move different from other marine LEDs looking to get the white channel as close to 12,000 to 14,000K as possible and saturating the output skewed more towards the blue spectrum instead a rounded, balanced approach. The company notes they went down this path after customer feedback and should add more color rendition in the yellow, orange and red hues in your tank.

As we mentioned before, the Sunburst is based off of Bridelux LEDs with 57 total LEDs in the system — 55 to light your tank during the daylight cycle and two for moonlights. The 3W LEDs are driven at 2W to extend the service life of the diode and are cooled with a hearty heatsink and fans. We aren’t sure what kind of fans are installed but are hoping they are higher quality, silent running fans to cutdown on the noise as much as possible.

The power is supplied through three separate power cords for each channel (white, blue and moonlights) and it comes with a stainless steel cable hanging system. For all you PAR and coverage geeks, check out the company’s graphs on the website.

The Apollo Reef LED SolarBlast Sunburst 4000 runs at $299 and is available now. For more information about the company and the light, check out the YouTube video below.

Justin Farabaugh

nice
http://www.facebook.com/people/Chad-Farmer/1782260796 Chad Farmer

i love my apollos and mine arte the first dimmable and these things are more powerful than u think they are
CaliReefer

For the price it seems like a great light. I would like to see some more specs on how many of each LED they are using. It would be nice if they also made a PWM fixture and used something like a Typhoon controller to give automatic dusk/dawn setting. Even if it cost $100 more I still think it would be worth it.
Frankie Torres

Love my solar blast artic reds….
Mike

I’m really loving the manually dimming, while yeah it’s not as sweet as a ramp up that you get with some of the pricier units/controllers you never had dimming with your halides or t5s!
http://www.reefbuilders.com/ Brian Blank

This is the low-end fixture without the controller. There are other options on the website including a dimming card with Ethernet port for just over $100.
Reefer@heart

I like the option of picking up the lower end LEDs, but this looks like every other Chinese import… The sad part of that is they only roll out new features once they see that others have done them. No real technological innovation from that side of the globe. :/ They just work to copy others and build if cheaper…

Sorry for getting on a soap box! I like a deal as much as the next guy, but I’ve seen it affect my company and others. And the general community just supports the behavior with their spending.

Kind of sad…
Justin Farabaugh

wait…… They are ahead of the others as they are one of the few offering anything under 450nm that you can get right now.
Reefer@heart

You do know why the major names in LED tech don’t have that right? It’s not because they don’t want it. LEDs in that spectral range don’t last. That the issue with the Chinese stuff, they here you say we want UV so they just put UV LEDs on the fixture without understanding the shortcomings of current tech.

The other bad part is they will tell you they are using branded LEDs, but I’d put a large sum of $$ on it that they would prove to be counterfeits if tested!

But I hear ya!!! It would be nice to see the real players able to implement UV!!! I just want trustworthy numbers behind it.
http://twitter.com/Dustin1300 Dustin

This is not a chinese fixture, just uses the same shell as some of the other chinese units you’d see out there. From my understanding Apollo used this shell when they started out as it was a much cheaper entry into the market rather than building out a new shell. Something in the future they want to include is their own branded shell so people don’t make this assumption when they don’t know the facts.
http://twitter.com/Dustin1300 Dustin

I did a full review on this fixture on RC with PAR numbers and testing I did on a 140 gallon frag tank. I’ve had it over the frag tank for a few months now and once I got my phosphates in check the fixture has shown good growth for SPS, LPS, and Softies. For the spread and PAR you get it’s really hard to beat and the integration to the controller makes it nice so you have a central point of administration. If you want to check out a more thorough review check it out:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2183870
http://twitter.com/Dustin1300 Dustin

29 Royal Blues, 22 Whites, and 4 UVs.

More details @
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2183870

The fixture outlined by RB is actually the dimable version (look at the network port for the Apex VDM)
Justin Farabaugh

I have 420nm Leds that have been running for almost 2.5 years now.
Reefer@heart

I looked at their site; I can’t seem to find where they are located. I’m still not convinced that they are not just an importer of a fixture that they spec to a overseas company.

I’ll refrain from making an hard comments because I just don’t know and can’t seem to find the answers. They certainly don’t present like a real manufacture in my opinion…
CaliReefer

Darn, that kind of ruined it for me. 4x 420nm LEDs? That isn’t enough actinic LEDs to matter, I would like to see a 50/50 mix between royal blue and actinic as I have found that to be the best combination on my DIY lights.
CaliReefer

No option for an on board controller? The DIY lights I make for locals with a Typhoon all have 1 power cord and I let the typhoon control everything (2 meanwell drivers, moonlights, and 120mm fan).
http://tinyurl.com/7bds2gn

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