Gako 052 lights

[Lynnzer]

I just bought the Gako A052's for my 90cm wide tank. After looking at many others these came out looking good for operation, PAR levels and spectral quality.
I already have a pair of Kessil A160WE Tuna Blue lights with the associated Spectral Controller after reading topics that gave them a thumbs up. However the Kessils are nowhere near as good from my own perspective. For a start, the controller, and the actual buttons on the top of the lights only really adjust the Blue and White intensity. That may be fine, however times have changed.
The Gako has infinite adjustment on 6 colours and has settings for Sunrise, Noon, Sunset and Moonlight with incremental steps between each mode. The individual lights are 4 dark blue/1 light blue/4 white/1 red/1 purple/1 green. Purple seems to be a UV light which makes the corals really stand out.
There's also a dimmer option to adjust the various colour intensities as well as the steps from 0% to 100%, plus a timed on/off setting.
There's an intelligent cooler fan in the lights that only runs when needed and is pretty silent. Just to add awareness, there's also a temperature display on the front.
Setting up is quite straightforward as long as you get an operation manual in English, or the language you prefer. Mine came with the Chinese manual but I was sent an email copy of the English version when I asked for it. If you need the English version either to get started setting the lights up, or just to look at the capabilities before purchase then I have it here for you.
The light fixtures, light housing black box, metal work etc seem to be aluminium alloy which is what you'd expect so shouldn't be a problem.
I can't give a longer term review of this light yet, and I'm still fiddling around with the settings a bit but I'm borrowing a PAR meter soon so I will be better able to give results on that shortly.
In the meantime, consider the cost. The average retailer of tank lights has an interest in pointing you to the expensive ranges, and I know my own Kessils cost an arm and leg. My own take on things is that if the lights are well made, have the light and colour intensity suitable for your corals and fish, and are infinitely adjustable at a cost of less than $80 each, or around £65 there's a world of difference. Even if the lights don't last too long, and God knows why a Cree light should fail early, then you can't understand why people should go for something at 5 or 6 times the cost.
I'll be adding the link for the Alibaba site selling them shortly when I have their agreement.

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[Lynnzer]

I thought I'd just give a follow-up to the above post on these lights.
Originally I had 2 over my AquaOne 120ltr tank. It was a bit difficult to comment on how effective they were at that time as I didn't have much in the way of coral frags in the tank, or at least those I did have were being chewed on by totally unsatisfactory fish. Apart from that, i'd only recently discovered that the water parameters for keeping coral were all over the place. Due to that, I had lots of frag bases with nothing on them scattered on the sand.
The ones that did survive over this period while I got to grips with salinity and all the other stuff did seem to enjoy being under the new lights.
Then I changed to the new D-D Reefer 900 pro where I've kept the water as near perfect as possible.
I really don't need 3 lights on a tank this size but hey, I had 3 so I used them.
The results are truly wonderful. The tank itself isn't too deep at 44cm, with the lights placed 16cm above the water surface.
So far the frags are all doing wonderfully well. Growth is going well and they look fantastic in colour.
I have mainly SPS, LPS and softies and they are placed in the tank without any consideration to depth. They all get a good amount of light.
The lights themselves are robust, easy to set up with the full spectrum and the full sunrise to sunset settings.
My only downside is that there's no way to join the wiring to a single controller to save me from having 3 plugs. At the price though, that is a secondary consideration.
After my first post on this topic, I bought another 2 lights to add to my original 2. I have only just placed the 4th light over a small 50ltr tank that I set up to house a rumbustious single clownfish that I couldn't put in my other tanks. I have a small reef built for this tank too and I have only just started to add corals so the light was added to allow the frags to flourish. Prior to that I didn't have any light at all as the tank is under a sunny window. It was always pristine. Water so clear that it looked transparent. Since I added the light I'm now suffering from brown algae so I'm doing adjustments to the light duration to prevent this.
However, the frags are blooming so the effectiveness is still apparent.

The longevity of the lights is something I won't know for a long time but in the meantime I can heartily recommend them as a really good inexpensive alternative to the more well known manufacturers. Alongside my Kessils, these show themselves as much more effective and as far as cost goes they are a fraction of the Kessil price.
A big thumbs up to these Gako lights.