# Nicrew LED light in my cart...



## Blue Ridge Reef (Feb 10, 2008)

I own a Nicrew LED and have mixed feelings. It's very bright -I use it on a 30" deep tank. They aren't particularly well-made in my opinion from owning one unit. Soldering inside the unit was sloppy, the fixture itself doesn't feel substantial or well-insulated, and metal "legs" that it suspends over the tank with are absolute bare minimum to keep it in place. That should not be an issue if placing it on a glass top. I have a Finnex also from Amazon that scores better in all of these complaints, though is still very much an economy LED. If I were buying another would lean towards that brand if on a budget. Having said that, I've had the Nicrew for almost 2 years now and it's grown plants. If you're more familiar with typical hobby lights seen in your LFS the difference between Nicrew and something like a Marineland Planted LED is pretty stark though.


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## Oso Polar (Apr 22, 2015)

I got NICREW ClassicLED Plus light together with NICREW Single Channel LED Light Timer for my 2.5 gallon tank about 3 weeks ago:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07LH2FJNC/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KYLX2P6/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1


They work as expected, I have absolutely no complaints about quality. Plenty of light for my small tank, I currently have it dimmed to 30% intensity and this seems to produce more light than 13 watt CFL that was on this tank before.


Just two things I didn't particularly like:


light spectrum - it is on a "cold" side of the things, I prefer lights that are ~5000K, I have a few Beamswork lights that are supposed to be 6500K, they look significantly warmer than NICREW;
timer allow just a *single* period of lighting - I prefer to run split photo period and this is impossible with this timer.
Ramp up/ramp down feature of the timer works great, I'd like to get somewhere similar timer that allow more than one cycle per day!


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## burr740 (Feb 19, 2014)

Get the dimmer, be way too much light w/o it


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

Timer/dimmer is always worth it..


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## milesm (Apr 4, 2006)

corey of aquarium co-op posted a review on youtube. par was 28 - 34 @ ~18". looks like the 24" model he tested. mentioned same build quality issues as blue ridge reef. i have the same timer/dimmer and use it on my beamswork. the sunrise/sunset feature is nice, but kind of "choppy" and if you set the lights to less than 100%, the sunrise/set time decreases from 15 min to about 11 (confirmed by nicrew).


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## BOTIA (Dec 23, 2003)

The nicrew classic plus is supposed to be for planted tanks plus its brighter than than the classic.
18watts version.
I have the classic plus on a 15 tall.


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## TheOne (Apr 30, 2019)

milesm said:


> corey of aquarium co-op posted a review on youtube. par was 28 - 34 @ ~18". looks like the 24" model he tested. mentioned same build quality issues as blue ridge reef. i have the same timer/dimmer and use it on my beamswork. the sunrise/sunset feature is nice, but kind of "choppy" and if you set the lights to less than 100%, the sunrise/set time decreases from 15 min to about 11 (confirmed by nicrew).


If I recall the one corey reviewed wasn't the Plus. Still gives a good idea about the brand.


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## milesm (Apr 4, 2006)

TheOne said:


> If I recall the one corey reviewed wasn't the Plus. Still gives a good idea about the brand.


yes, he reviewed the classic. and the op has a classic.


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## DaveKS (Apr 2, 2019)

These are ones i bought for my 7gal

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DDCBC4C/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07K28S6K5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Actually it’s mingdak brand timer is what I was shipped.

Basically $27 for light and $15 for ramp timer. You know it’s really perfectly fine for what I paid for it. It does little low tech tank fine. I’ve got multistage ramp timer set up for [email protected]%>[email protected]%>[email protected]% for good morn/midday/afternoon simulation. Only down side is ramp timer doesn’t have battery backup for clock setting but it does write your lighting sequence to non-volatile memory so you won’t lose that. Takes about 7sec to reset clock though. Is a workaround you can set up if you’ve got a old AC timer with battery backup for time. 

At those prices their almost bic lighter disposable as far as I’m concerned. 1 month in on them. Ramp timer as stated above is a little jumpy at 20% or less intensities, above 30% you barely notice it. 

Here’s light at 70%, grows rotala and red root floaters like crazy.


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