自从我们第一次出现我们的特色以来已经过去了六个月自己的软珊瑚礁坦克和with the new Hydra 64HD on the market, it’s time for an update on both the corals and the lighting upgrade. The various branching soft corals, toadstools and couple devil’s hand corals have certainly come into their own and now it’s time to shuffle a few things around, and at the same time try out AquaIllumination’s new flagship LED light.
Besides the very healthy, fast-growing corals, the fact that this nearly 10 month old tank is virtually algae and pest free makes it an absolute reefer’s dream. In fact if there’s any issue at all with this soft coral reef it’s the speed at which the coralline algae grows – we attribute it to frequent additions of Lugol’s iodine – and the soft corals growing out of synch with each other.
So with this beacon of soft coral health, and let’s not forget a nice bommie of variousTurbinaria和Duncanopsammiaon the back wall, it’s the perfect platform in which to evaluate a brand new reef light from AquaIllumination. Since this tank’s been running a pair of Hydra 52HD it was also a prime candidate for reviewing the updates and upgrades that AI included in the new Hydra 64HD.
Hydra 64 Hands-On: Top 10 Changes to AI’s Most Powerful LED Light
We already did a pretty thorough hands-on pre-review of the Hydra 64HD in the hardware of the light fixture so in this video we don’t dive too much into specs, but focus more on how the light compares to its predecessor. The performance of the Hydra 64HD is overall much the same – it has the same power rating but more LEDs and a much more uniform light distribution.
AquaIllumination is still busy working out some of the software controls like cloud connectivity, but the only real functional difference between thefifty two和the六十四是整体颜色。If you’re mostly rocking Windex blues you probably won’t notice a difference at all but at full brightness, the Hydra 52HD is a little bit warmer than the Hydra 64HD with the coralline appearing a familiar pink under the fifty two and more of a light purple under the sixty four.
这可能是一个较小的细节细节，如果我们在数周内没有并排跑步，我们不会注意到，但是像所有新灯一样，我们的礁石真的很习惯了我们拥有的灯光。既然双氢64HD已成为软珊瑚罐上的主要光源，我们注意到的是从这个24英寸（60厘米）宽的水族馆的前面到背面更均匀的光线 - 珊瑚前后的点亮要好得多。
On a side note, since we’ve never had the option we all but completely spaced the built-in moonlight of the Hydra 64HD and we’ll probably be revisiting that in a future article.
