Coralife Aqualight High Output T5 Dual Lamp Fixture

I would be very careful about purchasing a Coralife light fixture. I had a very poor experience, and my search on the web suggests others have had a similar experience. The fixtures are relatively inexpensive, and you appear to get what you pay for. The heart of a fluorescent fixture is the ballast. Mine only lasted 6 months. I run the light 10 hours a day so that means the unit failed after only 1800 hours of use. I would recommend looking at other manufacturers. Details about my experience follow.

In March 2010, I purchased a Coralife 48-inch dual T5 lamp high output fixture for my 60-gallon freshwater aquarium. The unit arrived and seemed satisfactory, although the directions could have been better. After assembling the fixture, I found that it worked satisfactorily until the middle of this month (October, 2010, it was off the entire month of September). In October, I found that when I turned on the light on in the morning, the ends of the light bulbs near the power cord would glow dimly, but would not turn on right away. If I waited for a minute or two, the bulbs would finally turn on. After a few days, however, the bulbs would not ignite at all, so I thought maybe I needed to replace the bulbs. I purchased two new bulbs and installed them. This seemed to fix the problem, and the bulbs would now

turn on when the switch was turned on. After one day, however, I noticed that the bulbs were flickering. I turned the unit off and then on and that seemed to fix the problem. A few hours later when I entered the room I found the aquarium light was off. I checked the plug and the bulbs to make sure they were properly seated in the end caps. Both the plug and the bulb installation were OK. I tried plugging the unit into another plug. Nothing worked. I began to worry that the problem was the ballast. I contacted the seller who informed me that they only had a 60-day warranty on their products.

I went to the web and began researching this. I found that the Coralife light fixtures have a bad reputation for failing. There were many complaints about ballast problems. Some of the more advanced aquarists recommended replacing the ballast with a Fulham Workhorse 5 ballast that they claimed was more robust than the ballast in the Coralite. I went to the web and found a bewildering array of ballasts. I went to my local aquarium store and was told that ballasts were not available for this light.

In the end, after hours of wasted time, I bought an AquaticLife T5 HO Dual Lamp fixture. My initial impression of this unit is that it is higher quality than the Coralife fixture. The directions for assembly were quite good and came on a CD. We will see how it performs.

Hi I ordered this Coralife T5 HO 30" Light Fixture for my planted tank and it arrived with one of the light bulbs broken, so I send it back for a replacement. The replacement light arrived on Monday April 30, 2012 good and working great. To bad it didn't last long, I come home one day (May 4, 2012) to notice my aquarium all lit in blue, the 10,000K Daylight bulb has dimmed dramatically {this 10,000K bulb didn't even last a week)to a point where only the Actinic Bluelight bulb is all that lights up the aquarium. So I went on ahead and purchased the 6,700K daylight bulb to replace the Actinic Bluelight Bulb and another 10,000K Daylight Bulb to replace the burnt one. Once these new bulbs arrive I'll replace them and hope that all ends well from there. I'm hoping that the ballast in the light fixture aren't malfunctioning...if that's the case I'll have to ask for another replacement.

Will "update" once my replacement bulbs arrive.

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I bought 5 of these of various sizes when they were on sale last year. Of these, only 2 are functioning. One had a bad switch that went out in a month, the other two just ceased to function. They're built to be disposable there's no way to get into the housing to fix the wiring or the switches. A total waste of money.

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High quality product. I love the plexiglass spashguard, especially with my open-top tank. I have a fully-planted high-tech 75 gal setup, and while my plants are growing and happy, they aren't pearling. If you just dose Flourish Excel or don't have many plants, this would work great for you. If you inject carbon and have a lot of plants competing for light, either buy 2 of this product or go with T5 HO light setup with 3 or 4 bulbs.

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I bought these lights in March, and after 2 months the switch started not turning he lights on and off, and now It is July and the lights have quit completely, but once Petco's return policy is 45 days I am stuck with them. I am going to pull them apart and see if I can fix the switch, but at this point I'm not hopeful. However, when the lights do work the worked great, and my corals looked great.

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