HLC-20A

Bought this light a couple weeks ago and it has been working like a charm! Love the customization that can be done and the set and forget peace of mind. Remote seems to be of good quality and the light is thin but sturdy and will look good on any tank! Best though if its on a covered tank according to the other reviews i have read prior to buying. If i should encounter any issues, i will update. So far though im happy to say ots the best light i have had, and would recommend to anyone looking for a way to make their tank stand out! Plants are showing good growth, and no algae present so far. But even algae can be fixed with settings and light intensity. Colors really stand out with this light, my fish look brighter, the castle i have in there looks like the details stand out more as well. With my previous light ( simple white led and blue option one) my tank disnt look as good. UPDATE 4-1-22 I did end up having a small issue with one side of my light because it did get some moisture on it from air bubbles popping at surface. Some of the led lights stopped working. I gave that light to my dad who is still using it and loves it. I bought the other model (not as thin) and covered tank so light has no moisture. This happened several years after purchase and I still say its the best one I have owned!

This tank is a 125Gal planted tank. I have used 2 36" T5 HO light fixtures for ever on this tank, but decided to go LED since the costs are now reasonable. One of my light fixtures died a while ago and the bulbs in the last fixture were fading fast. This is the 48" Finnex Planted+ 24/7 HLC Aquarium LED Light and is very bright and the color temp is very natural looking and give my fish vibrant colors. I keep it on the 24/7 timer so it simulates natural sunrise to sunset to moonlight. I think the light output is great if you have low to med plants. If you want to go brighter or are running a CO2 setup, you may need a second fixture which I am considering. Doing nothing else but changing out the light. I have noticed what plants were left in the tank started to really green up in about a week. The evening moon glow is really awesome and my clown loaches come out an play a lot more than they used to. This is a great light and worth the price.

This is the perfect light for me, have a 40G tank. It has the perfect adjustability for brightness and color tone to get it perfect. The 24x7 schedule is just perfect with no changes required for me. Just love the color tones it produces. I love the warm light in the evenings and I just loved how my tank looks with this light. The light is super slim and the edge brackets are transparent. I just wish the light was black to match my tank but the silver color is just fine. I also tried some other options where they have white, blue, red, green as three separate rows and these lights are much bigger and the colors are not nice. The default schedule options were also sad with split red light at night which just looked super sad. I also tried the Fluval 2.0 and although the light quality is superb, the overall brightness was lowers compared to Finnex. Fluval comes with a Bluetooth app which gives more flexibility on schedules but when trying the Bluetooth connection kept failing and I had to switch on and off the light from the app. Lastly the Fluval does not have any switch on the light itself so fully dependant on the app which I did not like.

This is a competent and capable light once you figure out how to program it. There is a 24/7 preset which I ignore. Instead, I’ve opted to program my own 24/7 setting that consists of 3 hours of gradually increasing light, 3 hours of peak brightness, 3 hours of gradually decreasing light, and then 15 hours of off-time. I like lighting to have a touch of warmth and to bring out the reds and greens, so I set the HLC to utilize the red and white LEDS the most, followed by some green and just a smidgen of blue. However, I don't full blast the white LEDs. Like other sub-$100 aquarium plant lights, the color temperature is too cold,. This is the biggest knock against the HLC in my opinion. The color temperature is north of 7,000 kelvin. The sweet spot, though, for a more naturalistic look, is around 5,000 kelvin. However, budget aquarium lights don't achieve this. They look artificially bluish. To offset the garish color temperature, I crank up the reds. The reds on the HLC, however, appear to be purely for aesthetics; they're not designed to enhance photosynthesis. The fixture itself is well-built, looks clean and modern and doesn’t get hot at all. I also like that it’s controlled via remote and not an app on my phone—it makes it less likely to immediate obsolescence. This is a very good light, overall. The only light under $100 that bests the HLC, and is in fact leagues above it, would be the Chihiros RGB A Plus, but I believe it's been discontinued, or at least it's not available in the US anymore. The only other light under $100 that I'd recommend would be another one by Finnex, the ALC, which is a bit stronger. The HLC, though, produces a better looking light.

I bought the 30" version of this light, to replace a Current Satellite that stopped working. I had been a big fan of the Current lights, but am SO HAPPY with this Finnex light, I am now waiting for the other Currents to stop working so I can replace them too! The Finnex: - has a comparable price - Includes the auto ramp feature, which the Current makes you buy separately (so I guess that makes it $50 cheaper!) - is brighter - is thinner - sits about an inch higher, which light the tank more evenly, protects from splash better, and has more 'shimmer' effect from the surface ripples. - is more adjustable (width) - is more programmable. There are 8 independent time-of-day settings, can be set to different colors which fade from one to the other through the day (or not, if you just want auto/manual on & off). The factory, out-of-the-box settings use this 24 hour fade feature to simulate night, morning, noon, evening. I am quite happy with the factory settings, but may decide to tweak them to have a longer 'full sun' period.

I researched LED lighting for some time before I purchased the Finnex Planted+ 24/7 HLC Aquarium LED Light. My plants are growing very nicely (see photos) and there is enough algae for the algae eating fish with this LED light bar. I only need one and I had had two hoods of of a total of four fluorescent tubes before and I spent close to the same amount that this LED light cost on four tubes annually. I am very, very happy with this light. The programming takes a bit to figure out. I found some info in Amazon questions as to how to program it. The three hour time periods would be better if they were two hour. Just a note. If you want your lights to go on at 6 AM then you need to program it for 9 AM. The lights start going on three hours prior to whatever time you set it. I did not like the preset program that had a lot of red light so I programmed it to the spectrum that I liked. This is a great LED light if you have a heavily planted aquarium. The two things that need improvement are: The legs slide off easily when handling the light hood and need to be tighter in the track. Second, the time period choices need to be one or two hour periods to give the user more flexibility. Remote comes with three hour periods which are not flexible enough. And a big negative is that when the electricity flashes or goes out completely you have to reprogram the start time as this fixture has no reserve power such as a coffeemaker. Other than that I love it !

Just got two on amazon and its working well. Not as bright as my finnex DS its replacing but the changing 24/7 mode is very nice. Not too red of a sunset which i was worried about. What i love is that i got two and can control them with ONE remote!!! Also you can control the 24h colors if you are not happy with the spectrums. One month edit: After using it for a month i have to say this light is great. Plants are growing well and the RGB LEDs make colors pop nicely. Im in love with my guppies all over again and my red cherry shrimp have never looked redder. I got a cover for the tank as its recommended so the light is not exposed to access moisture and splash. This should make it last longer. I edited the light cycle so it has 6 hours of night darkness which is great. Extended the daylight bring cycle to 6 to get more growth out of the plants. The rest is a slow morning and evening rev up and down which looks great and now i can finally enjoy my tank all day!!! Recommend 100% Many many moons update: growing plants well. No color shift after years of use. Growing HC carpet well and red plants really pop as long as you keep them 80% or more in brightness. I now have 6 of these in 20” 24” and 30” and 36”. And guess what, i can still control them all with one remote at the same time so they can all have the same light cycle.

I cannot stress enough how much we love these light fixtures. Metal, sleek, discreet, bright, highly programmable, reliable, and durable are a few of the many adjectives I would use to describe these lights. We use these fixtures on all of our freshwater live planted tanks as well as order them for our clients when getting them set up with new equipment. Below I will highlight some key pros about these lights (note: there are no cons) Pros: The Lighting - These lights are bright at their highest setting, and plenty strong enough to reach the lowest parts of most tanks (no PAR values though, sorry!). With the customization built into the remote and 24/7 functionality, they can be set to an incredibly wide range of color wavelengths as well as intensities to suit your tanks needs. This makes it very easy to make adjustments to combat algae growth over time. The 24/7 Function and Remote: - Simple to set up, reliable lighting. With other lights, I have had issues with their timer settings using the small boxes integrated to the cord. In power outages, those ones will reset and not turn back on until you manually do so and will need to reset the timer. That is not the case here. Using the remote, you can set the lighting intensity and colors with the touch of a button for every 3 hours, which will then slowly transition to each set value throughout the day. When power goes out, the settings are saved and the lights will pick up where they left off. All you need to do is set the current time, since the light will think it is still the time of the power outage. Its simple and amazingly reliable. The Quality: - Made from high quality aluminum, these fixtures are durable, sleek looking, and lightweight. While they are not made to be hanged from the wall or ceiling, their lightweight nature and slim design make it easy to fashion up a simple mounting system without fear of it falling due to weight. These lights are made to last, and Finnex has been a fantastic brand for years. With so many other brands popping up (the ones with the odd "Amazon Names"), you need to know that these guys are the real deal. I have used their fixtures on all of my personal tanks for over 15 years now, and some of my original fixtures still work to this day, albeit slightly dimmer than they were out of the box. I know every time I buy one of these lights that it will work out of the box, is easy to set up and program, and will work for many years to come. Discovering Finnex when I did has led to incredible success keeping live plants. If that wasn't enough to sell you on this light fixture, then please see the below final thought: BUY THIS LIGHT RIGHT NOW, YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT!

This light is fantastic I live in the UK and have a tank with the fluval planted 3 on and its a good light but wanted something different for my 70 litre shrimp tank, I always heard good things about finnex from people across the pond so I took a chance and purchased the planted 24/7. Well I'm glad I did Only downside is the brackets could be better quality but still ok and the light is fantastic and growing my plants well without co2. Highly recommended and would not hesitate to purchase another one.

This light only works via remote that ships with it. In my case, I couldn't power on a brand new light even though all of the indicators suggested that everything was working. The Finnex support team was also stumped for why the light wasn't working. The issue is that there is no way to manually turn on the light with a button, switch, etc. It's either the remote, or you have an expensive paperweight. I wouldn't recommend this light because even if the remote does work for a few years, eventually it will break, and eventually you'll wish that you had a way to manually power on/off your light. I got a Fluval 3.0 instead, and while it costs a lot more, it's also much better than the planted plus. As an aside, the Finnex support agent tried to blame the light not working on an Amazon scam by saying that it was probably repackaged and sold as new, even though the light came exactly as they described a new, unopened one would. They offered no useful solutions other than LOL AMAZON BAD! Here's a solution for you, Finnex: put a power button on the light!

It's a fabulous light for an aquarium. What is very good about this light is that its brilliant leg design is such that it can used for both rimless and braced tanks. Most of the new led lights are for rimless tanks. It is so easy to put the legs onto the fish tank. It's relatively stable too. The other plus is the 24 hour light scenes. Just leave on alone and it should imitate mother nature's lighting timings. The light is sufficient for a planted tank but if you want faster plant growth, especially for your red plants, you need to look at another brand. It is a very good light for those who are not willing to spend too much on lighting for your aquarium. I recommend it highly.

La lampara cumple con las especificaciones, por el momento me encuentro satisfecho con el producto.

Only a month and the fixture has already froze up, and won't accept commands. Will turn on and off but is stuck in programming mode. Should have just bought a fluvol