Our latest video features a new light series, the Fluval Reef 4.0 LED Lights (there are also Fluval Plant 4.0 LED Lights).

The tank featured in the video is my office tank that I set up for the Building A Budget REEF Aquarium Video series. This tank was set up from the very beginning with the Fluval Marine and Reef 3.0, which is the old version of this new light. The tank has been doing pretty well. We got all kinds of coral. We got soft corals and LPS corals. We got a couple easy SPS corals, such as montipora. They've all done very, very well under the old 3.0 light.

But now there's a 4.0. Is it any better? Yes, it is. There are a few things that make this 4.0 light better than the 3.0 light.

1.BlueTooth AND WiFi. The 3.0 light is completely controlled through Bluetooth, which works fine if you're close to the light. The biggest problem I've had with this is when I had a power outage, and then it came back on, the light lost the time stamp. So, basically, when the power went out, it turned back on, thought it was midnight, and restarted the day. So, I had to connect to the light with my phone, then resync the time, and then it started doing its regular schedule, which is a bit annoying, but not a big problem. The new light has both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, in which case if there is a power outage like we have occasionally, it'll turn off, turn back on, and then it will grab the correct time stamp from your Wi-Fi network. That way, you won't have to reconnect to it to reset it. It'll automatically get reset to the correct time. That is a great upgrade on this new 4.0 light.

2.BRIGHTER AND BLUER. They've changed the diodes a little bit. Fluval hasn't published exactly what they've changed, but just looking at the spec list, the new light is supposed to be a little bit brighter, which is welcome because I have been running this light at full power on this tank, and it's been enough, but I always like a little bit more. And then lastly, they changed the color of this light. My 3.0 light always looked just a little bit too white, and I wanted a little bit more blue pop.

In the video we use an Apogee PAR meter to take some PAR (photosynthetic active radiation) values with the Fluval Marine And Reef 3.0 Light I have on the tank (which I did clean). Then I unbox the Fluval Reef 4.0 Light, put it on the tank and measure the PAR values for the new light.

Flvual’s website says we should expect an increase in lumens of about 10%. In the video you’ll see that with the Fluval 3.0 we get 70 to 80 PAR at the bottom of the tank and PAR values in the 90s toward the top of the tank. With the Fluval 4.0, it’s closer to 90 at the bottom and 120 toward the top. That’s a pretty big difference. The 4.0 is definitely brighter.

The next important factor is the color of this light. With all the LEDs on, the color looks very similar to the old version of the light, with just the exception that this light is brighter. However, it is much, much bluer. One of my personal disappointments with the 3.0 light is I couldn't really get a lot of fluorescent pop out of it. I like the Windex look with our corals, and I just felt like I never got a huge amount of that with the 3.0. However, with the Fluval 4.0 LED, once I pull the whites out and run it as just the blues, it does look like I am getting more overall fluorescence. You need to check out the video to see this.

The last thing I can't quite show you, but this light has both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The advantage of Bluetooth is that if your Wi-Fi network has weird security features that make it hard to add devices, you can just control it through Bluetooth. And actually, the 2.0 Fluval Light had Wi-Fi. They switched to Bluetooth to avoid those problems. This light really is the best of both worlds, where it has both. And what that means is you don't have to worry about needing to connect to a Wi-Fi network if you have those issues. But if you do, you get the advantage of the light automatically resyncing with the cloud whenever there's a power outage. So it just runs a lot more smoothly. And I think that that combination of both together is a very real upgrade.

-Jaron Hudson,[email protected]