I have three of these 24" units over my 72" long 125 gallon tank.They are great for my purposes of growing plants, but I will give the pros and cons as I suspect that the negatives may outweigh the positives to many people.
Pros:
Great lighting that makes the tank and the fish look gorgeous!
My tank is freshwater, and I can grow any kind of plant I want with these lights! I also credit Purigen and Sea Chem fertilizers for my success with plants).
As my tank is filled with new growths of easy plants that tolerate less light but flourish in higher illumination like java moss or hornwort almost every week, I routinely produce new plants for my other tanks with standard T8 lighting.
Cons:
Because these lights are bright, they run hot, making the fan on the fixture loud. One of my three lights routinely gets stuck in a noise pattern in which a hum developed near the fan vent which is on the top of the fixture and keeps getting louder and LOUDER. Although I can quiet the light by (gently) thwacking on the fan, I doubt that this is very good for the light in the long run! The noise overwhelms any noise coming from my Eheim and Penn Plax canister filters, so if you are noise sensitive forget these lights unless you are good at fixing this type of thing.
There are TWO light bulbs on the fixture, and a replacement light bulb for these fixtures are quite expensive, so you have to shop around in order to spend a bundle on a light bulb.
Again, the look of my planted aquarium and the production of plants outweighs these (admittedly big) negatives to me, but you must decide for yourself.
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