Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

In general I like the clarity and brightness of LED lighting, but I have to admit that I am not sure whether I can say I like it in the fish tank. My old flourescent hood provided a warmer light than this LED hood does, even though the mixing of blue LEDs in with the white was meant to tone down the light. I do like the night or "moonlight" mode which just uses the 3 blue LEDs. This offers my fish a good transitional period between day and complete dark. At first, I really liked the low-profile look of the hood. I thought it was kind of cool that the whole hood hinged upwards when you opend it and attached directly to the tank instead of just resting on top of it. I quickly came to the conclusion that is not a very cool feature. First off the condensation on the underside of the hood races to the back and runs off. For the most part, it just goes right back into your tank but if you have an over-the-back filter, that means you now have water all over the top of your filter. Also, when you are opening the hood to feed your fish, it drips all over the place. The first time I fed my fish, I had the open food container in the same hand I used to partially prop open the hood and had a bunch of water drip into the container. That really pissed me off considering a small container of food is $12 and I couldn't salvage much. It is just poor design planning. Also important to note about condensation is if you have hard water in the least bit, you will get deposits on not only the underside of the hood, but the light lens, and possibly the OTB filter. Add to the fact that the light lens is plastic so you cannot scrub hard-water off of it without scratching the hell out of the plastic lens and you have longevity issues. Even if you don't have very hard water, over time you will get deposits, it is just a fact of life in the aquarium hobby. Condensation management for this hood just plain sucks. Maybe if you live in an area where the humidity is very high and you don't condition the air in your house you will not have the kind of condensation issues I am having. I also don't like the light coverage inside the tank. The edges of the tank are not lit up as they would be with a flourescent bulb spanning the entire length of the tank. Add to this that when you open the hood, the LEDs move away from the water and shine in your face. This design oversight means there is no way to make changes to the tank's contents and see how they look as you make the changes if you are trying to set it up for display. Instead, you have to remove your arm and close the lid to get the visual. As I was changing the tank contents around to make it look the best under the new lighting conditions, this became a pain. I suppose it is a one-time issue. Also, the break-away/cut-away section on the hood for OTB filter and cords, etc.. seems to be opposite of my previous hoods. I had to completely rearrange the contents of my tank so that I could move the heater and filter and other accessories to take advantage of this hoods setup. I was not a happy camper! I spent a lot of time getting my tak the way I liked it and then had to try and mimic that in a mirrored version to make this hood work. (That should have been my clue to send it back, but I pressed on...) Finally, there is no way to open the hood in increments. It is either fully open or closed. This means that when doing maintenance, you have to have no lighting in the tank because the LEDs are staring you in the face. I know, just turn them off but then you have to turn them back on and close the lid to see if what you were doing is actually complete. In summary, I was not impressed. I think with more effort in the design department and more commitment by the manufacturer to develop something that helps to showcase the contents of an aquarium as well as lnot inhibit the ability to maintain the tank, LED lighting has the potnetial to take the hobby by storm. Right now, though, the only bragging rights this product has in my opinion are "First to Market". I would wait before making an LED hood purchase.