We’re not sure what to be most excited about regarding the new Tricolor LED puck for the AquaIllumination light: that it’s the first commercial aquarium LED light to incorporate XP series royal blue LEDs or the first to deliver both blue and royal blue LEDs in one package. It was exciting enough to dissect this powerhouse LED light a few weeks ago to discover that the AI would be able to easily swap out new LED pucks in different colors and other types of LEDs. No sooner does the word start getting out that the AI light is very much an LED platform like the PAR38 lamp do we get our hands on our dream trifecta of LED colors: warm white, blue and royal blue. For those of you who haven’t dabbled in LED reefing yet, let us assure you that the blue and royal blue LEDs are signigificantly different from the each other. The royal blue LED best compliments the warm white XPG led and together the blue and royal blue LEDs bring out much more color and fluorescence the way you would expect from using both actinic 03 and a super blue colored reef lights. However in the case of the AI light, with two different LED pucks in it’s arsenal, it will be possible to fine tune the color to nine different color combinations ranging from the current color temperature, to one using all 8 pucks with the new tricolor white/blue/royal blue configuration. More details and pictures after the break.
We tried photographing the color of the spot projected by different combinations of the pucks but the white balance of our camera would not cooperate with the two different spectrums of blue. We did however gauge the apparent color temperature with our eyeballs of how the AI looked when projected on a flat white surface. With all the bucks being the original 1:2 ratio of blue to whites, the color looks like a blue 10K or a white 12K metal halide lamp. With half of the pucks switched over to the tricolor LED pucks in the zig-zag pattern (like in the image above) the AI has the appearance of a typical 12K halide lamp. When the AI runs all tricolor LED pucks, the appearance is that of a typical 14K halide light. Keep in mind that all of these visual inspections were made while running the AI light at full intensity as it is possible to individually control each LED of the AI using the AI controller. The new Tricolor LED pucks won’t be available until later summer at which point you will be able to upgrade to the new pucks for an undisclosed sum and we also expect the AI will eventually of shipping with the Tricolor LED pucks. Huge thanks to AquaIllumination, our newest sponsor, for sending these prototype tricolor LED pucks from their preciously small test batch. Check back with us soon when we report how the new color combo looks over real live corals.
