The AquaRay and AquaBeam LED lights from Tropical Marine Centre (TMC) now have two different controller options to choose from. Quality Marine recently posted that they now have in stock the AquaRay Control and the AquaRay Power Control “each of which can be used to control 2 x AquaBeam/GroBeam 500 or 2 halves of an AquaBeam / GroBeam 1000. Each controller allows sunrise, sunset, full daylight, and moonlight phases”. From what we can gather, the only difference between the two models is that the Aquaray Power Control has an integrated power supply and it is wall mountable. However, there is also a storm function in the Power model that dims the lights during a water change and then flashes the LEDs to simulate lightning. Supposedly this latter function is designed to induce some kind of mating response but we thinks the flashing LEDs of the storm function are more likely to put you (or your fish) in a spasmodic state, especially if you are all up in the tank while doing your water change. We’ve not yet seen a US retailer for the controllers but pricing on the basic controller for AquaRay and AquaBeam in the United Kingdom is 70 quid which is about $112. You can expect the AquaRay Power Control to be priced well north of that figure because you know, that epileptic seizure function doesn’t come cheap.
