The MOST Important Feature In An Aquarium Light!

Aquarium lighting. It's a hot-button topic that can lead to some pretty heated debates. People get so serious about lighting and will argue about things like PAR level until things get downright nasty. If you ask online in a chat room, if those are even a thing anymore, a Facebook group or a YouTube comment section what's the perfect light, you're going to get overwhelmed with how many different answers you get. Well, I'm here today to tell you something really important. Are you ready for it? It's all nonsense. I said it. The reason I say that is because to me lighting is a very subjective thing. Yeah, it's true. If you're going to keep certain plants, you'll need to have super powerful lights. But most of the plants we keep will be just fine with the LED light that came with your starter kit. And there's no such thing as a fish that needs a certain light. So if you're not satisfied with the light you currently have, you want to upgrade but you're unsure about what to look for, I'm going to help you out here. For most people when they're shopping for a light, the first thing they're going to look at is price. And that totally makes sense, especially these days. But I want you to think about something other than price when you make this decision. I want you to think about what the light does to your aquarium. Case in point, look at this comparison of two different lights. I'm not going to tell you what brand name these two lights are yet, but look at the difference in the way the tank looks. This tank that you're looking at is in our brand new plant room and I think it's the perfect tank to show this kind of thing. Just pay close attention to the red Ludwigia on the right and the green Bacopa on the left. Hey wait a minute, you didn't know we're selling live plants on our website now? What have you been doing? We are! We're selling Tropica plants on our website now. I'm so excited about this. If you want to check them out, I'll put a link down in the pinned comment and in a couple of weeks I'll do a video all about them. This is the largest producer of aquarium plants on earth, folks. Anyway, look how light number one looks. It looks fine. I mean, it lights up the tank. It's certainly bright enough to grow the plants, but then look at number two. Look how much deeper the red and the green is. This is with both lights on their full blast settings. When I see this drastic of a difference, I'm like, okay, I don't care about bells and whistles. I don't care if it hooks up to an app or if it's got some fancy timer on it. I just want my tank to look like that. Okay, it's story time. I guess it was about a year and a half ago, I was looking to pick up a more premium light to carry on our website. My good friend Jay Wilson was telling me I've got to meet the Reefbrite guy. Reefbrite is a manufacturer of high-end lighting for the saltwater hobby, and I said to him, why would I want to talk to a saltwater guy? And he said, you just have to trust me. You want to meet this guy. Meanwhile, at multiple aquashellas, I would be going outside during the shows, take a little break, and indulge in my vices, and I would always talk to this guy. He was a super high-energy guy. He was almost always wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and judging by his accent, he was obviously from New York. He was one of those, hey, forget about it. Let's go get a slice. Go f**k yourself. I could listen to those guys talk all day long. So, fast forward to Dallas Aquashella 2021, Jay Wilson runs up to me and he says, hey, I want to introduce you to the Reefbrite guy, and reluctantly, I was like, all right. We go into this room that was set up for vendors. It was like a pre-aquashella party set up for vendors to meet other vendors, and he takes me up to this tank that's there, and it has this light on it, and I don't know how to explain it, but it was stunning. I was like, wait a minute. Is this the light that's made by Reefbrite? And Jay was like, yeah, dummy. That's what I've been trying to tell you. So, I sit there and stare at this tank with drool coming out of my mouth while Jay goes off to get the Reefbrite guy, and when he comes back, wouldn't you know it? It was that guy from New York wearing the Hawaiian shirt. Little did I know this whole time, I'd been going out there and talking to the owner of one of the most respected aquarium lighting companies in the industry. His name is Tulio, and he is awesome. Hey, forget about it. Now, like I said earlier, Reefbrite is known in the industry as being a high-end saltwater aquarium manufacturer, but for the last couple of years, they've been developing this. This is the Lumilite Pro. Actually, this isn't it. This is just an empty box, but you know what I'm saying. Now, let me tell you something, folks. This light is unlike any other aquarium light I've ever seen, and I promise I'm not being a salesman. When you have a conversation with Tulio, he's going to tell you all about why they use red LEDs and the particular red LEDs that they use and the impact that it has on plant growth, and he'll talk to you about the number of LEDs that are used and all of that science-y stuff, but I'm going to be honest with you. I don't care about all that. What I care about is what I've been talking about throughout this whole video. I care about what it does to the tank. Over the course of the last year and a half, basically since I was officially introduced to Tulio back in Dallas of 2021, he sent me like eight to ten different lights to test out while they've been developing all of these, and I gotta tell you, I mean, me? They chose me to get input from on these lights? Way to make your boy feel special. The configuration of the LEDs has basically stayed the same the whole time, but what they were working on was the wiring and the dimmers and the switches and stuff like that, and they wanted to know how I felt about those things. I'm even the one that suggested to them that they put this inline switch in here to turn everything off. You used to have to do it with the dimmers, and guess what? They actually did it. They took my input. So here's what you get in the box. It's pretty simple. You get the light, two of these legs that attach to it and are adjustable, they can go back and forth, two dimmers, one for each channel, the AC adapter, the power cord, and this simple on-off switch, and oh, by the way, it comes with like a thousand feet of wire, and it also has these brackets that are mounted on it for in case you want to hang it from the ceiling like I've done here. If you don't want to do that, and you don't like the look of this bracket, a simple Phillips head screwdriver takes it right off. Now with these dimmers, you have like 50 different configurations that you can do with this light, but if I'm being honest with you, I like it to be full blast. That's how I run all of the lights in here. I run them all full blast. That's how you're going to get the most dramatic look out of it. You see all of that magic stuff that it does to the tank, so I've been talking about it this whole time. You just have to see it. Now let me explain something here real quick. When I was holding the light and adjusting the dimmers, I couldn't see it on the screen. Was the light flickering? If it was, I want you to know that was not a malfunction of the light. Let me explain why that's happening. That is a weird thing that happens with LEDs and cameras. It has to do with the camera's shutter speed, and this is all LEDs. It's not just these lights. That's why if you ever watch car reviews, a lot of times you'll see all of the lights flickering on these cars, and that's because it's usually a smaller channel that hasn't figured out shutter speed yet. You're like, why are all the lights blinking? That's so annoying. That's not the car malfunctioning, and it's not aquarium lights or any other LEDs, for that matter, malfunctioning. It has to do with the camera's shutter speed not agreeing with the frequency of the LED, and it only shows up on camera. It's not something you can see with the naked eye. I've filmed entire videos before in my fishroom and didn't realize that was happening in the background and had to scrap the whole thing, but not with these lights, though, because they don't do it if you run them full blast, so yay. Now let me tell you three things that make this light stand out. First is what we've been talking about this whole time. It's the dramatic effect these lights have on the tank. Reds are redder, blues are bluer, and it just seems to make everything almost look like it's glowing. I've said it before and I'll say it again. You just have to see it. I'm just gonna keep saying it. I've even told Tulio that I'd like to get these lights and rebrand them the Yahtzee lights. Yahtzee would be an acronym for you just have to see it. Now, I'm fully aware that Y-J-H-T-S-I is not pronounced Yahtzee, but listen, it's 2023. We can make the rules whatever we want. If I want Y-J-H-T-S-I to be pronounced Yahtzee, well, then it's Yahtzee. So there. The second thing that makes these lights stand out is they are completely handmade. An employee at Lumilite builds these things entirely by hand. It's just a guy or a girl at a workbench and the best part is that workbench is in New Jersey. Yes, you heard me correctly. Lumilites are 100% made in the USA. How many products are made in the USA these days? Not many. Now, full transparency, I have no issue whatsoever with products manufactured overseas. In fact, I have several products on my website that are manufactured in China and they're great, but if I can have a product that's made entirely in the USA, I'm gonna get that 100 times out of 100. It's just so rare to find that anymore. Of course, there's one and only one drawback to a product that's made in the USA and that's cost. These are not cheap lights, but I gotta tell you, when you see what these lights do, you'll see why they're worth every penny. So listen, like I said in the beginning, a light can make or break an aquarium and it's not the gizmos and the apps and the gadgets that do it, it's what it does to the tank that makes all the difference. Who even uses an app for their aquarium light anyway? I mean, listen, I'm sorry Fluval, I love your 3.0 light. I think it's one of the best out there, but I've never used the app. That's another great example. I love the Fluval 3.0 light. I have one in my fish house and I absolutely love it, but I don't love it because of anything the light has. I love it for what the light does. So there you go. If you'd like to check out the Lumalight, I will leave a link for it at the top of the description just below the like button. But hey, listen, like I said, these lights are a little pricey, so we can't keep a ton of them on stock. But the good thing is, with them being manufactured just a few states away, I can restock really fast. I won't have to wait three months to get them like those other lights I carry. Yeah, it's New Year's. We take the entire month off. Anyway, thank you so much for watching. I can't wait to talk to you again on the next one, but I'm just now thinking there's one more thing I wanted to say. Oh yeah, these lights are definitely powerful enough to run on your high-tech planted tank, too. Just saying. Bye.