TMC GroBeam 1500 Ultima Natural Daylight

I have three of these in my Aqua Oak 310 tank. I was aiming for a medium light level for a tank without any added CO2. Almost a year in I am quite happy with the lights. The punch through to the bottom of my 60 cm tank and the spread of the light nice and even. The plants are growing well and I have to cut down the faster growing plants every other week to keep them in check.

I mounted the lights on a TMC AquaRay MMS Rail that I positioned on top of two oak pieces that I lay on top of the cover glass with a piece of styrofoam too keep the wood from getting wet. I cut the oak pieces from an 41 mm square spindle bought at B&Q and I treated the oak with some natural wax. The setup makes it easy to move the lights out of the way when I am doing maintenance.

The one thing I don’t like with the lights is the high frequency sound they emit when the lights are not at a 100%. I did not discover this until my wife got me the TMC AquaRay Smart Control 8. At first I thought it was something wrong with the controller and sent it back for replacement. But, the replacement had the same problem. When I contacted the manufacturer I was told that this was due to the protective circuit on the light tiles. And that they did not expect you to hear the sound over the noise from the aquarium pump. I don’t know what pump they expect their customers to have but my pump is pretty much silent, so every time the controller dims the light I can hear the sound from the lights. It is tolerable when it comes to the ramping up for morning and evening , but I have never used the cloud or storm feature since it is pretty much ruined by the sound.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *