Aqua Illumination teases a New LED Aquarium Light

I figured EcoTech’s Radion would be next in line for a revamp, with Aqua Illumination launching the Blade strip lights in 2023, but last night I was surprised to see a teaser for what looks like the PCBs of a totally new light fixture from Aperture’s AI.

A glimpse of the future

In a short video, AI shows what appears to be some roughly Hydra 64/Radion XR30-sized circuit boards with an interesting light array comprising a central, circular cluster and some very spaced-out diodes on the rest of the board. This comes on the back of a BRS video from a year ago flashing up on my feed the day before titled “6 Months of Lighting Experiments & What We Learned About the Future of Reef Tank Lighting.” and without watching the whole thing, Thomas says “we’ve been focusing on the wrong thing for a long time now,” so my guess would be another take on spectrum, but also another take on spread.

Both aspects of LED aquarium lighting have long been argued, and continue to be argued to this day. With better testing equipment available to the hobbyist, they can now measure PAR and spectrum, but most good reefers have good results with almost any reef light now, and if you think you’re having problems solely because of your lighting, and only the newest, bestest light can help you, it’s probably not true.

Despite this, as a self-confessed lighting junkie, and an LED light user of twenty years now, I’m interested in what’s to come next from Aqua Illumination, and I want to know more. I also consider myself well versed with both AI and EcoTech lights, running every generation of radion from Gen 1, and running over 60 hydras at a former marine wholesale facility.

I’ve also always argued that, with AB+ being the best spectrum for coral growth, why not produce a fixed spectrum (AB+), dimmable, programmable light, which removes the colour sliders that may take it out of optimum? It could save thousands of beginner reefkeepers, and experts, a lot of hassle.

A guessing game

So here’s my guess. It makes no sense to produce a lower-price version of the Radion G6 (unless they are fundamentally overhauling the Radion for G7) whereby they produce a broad-spectrum, wide-spread fixture. The spread has been getting wider and wider since the Radion Gen 3, and I’d now go as far as to say the spread is too wide on the G6, at the cost of par and penetration at depth. Fit the new, narrower lenses to a Radion G6 Pro, however, and it’s back to being a killer light.

On the flip side, with the Radion getting wider and wider spread, the cluster in the Prime 16, Hydra 32 and 64 remained tight in contrast, producing PAR at depth with minimal to no side glare. Think of the focusing capabilities of a Maglite Torch, which is capable of either a long, narrow beam or a short wide one. This has also always been the case with aquarium LEDs and I’m not surprised by that. But I wonder if in 2025, twenty years into aquarium LED innovation, Aqua Illumination want to have both, combining the penetration of the Hydra with the spread and spectrum of the Radion? The central cluster in the video looks like it could provide the PAR and the punch, and the coloured diodes spread out on the outside, the spectrum.

Is the latest Aqua Illumination light like a Hydra, and a Blade, in one? Will it combine the best features of the Hydra, the Blade, and the Radion, and surpass them all?

A Hydrade? A Hydradion? A Bladion???

Or will it take a quantum leap into the future of LED lighting and utilise tech we haven’t seen before? And bring with it a totally new product name?

Here’s the teaser…