How are you liking the backlight? I've been thinking off and on of getting one.
I am having a love/hate relationship with this backlight. I purchased it in large part because of the staircase that is behind the tank. The hand rail was too distracting, and still quite visible through a frosted foil (I would have had to go with solid white vinyl on the back of the tank to make the hand rail disappear entirely).
As this is a large, and odd-sized tank (150), I am limited to the
backlight from ARC (and grateful they make one!). I know
ADA makes one, but I haven't found it available here in the US for this size tank. The UNS ATMOs for a 150 doesn't exist. ATMOS only goes up to a 120P, so that wasn't an option either. I don't think
LightGround, which is popular in Europe and the UK is available at all here in the US (as with all things aquascaping, our options really are pretty limited here).
The lightscreen itself is good. The app to run it is a piece of
. It frequently resets permissions, and then can't find the Bluetooth controller. Also, I have burned out two of the 12V AC/DC power supplies in the last week! (This is my second screen, because the first one arrived damaged. Kudos to ARC, though, for replacing it as it is quite pricey and expensive to ship for a tank this size). The power supply for the replacement screen started to fail on Wednesday, and caused the entire screen to start flickering. Rather than place a
'seizure warning' label on the tank I swapped it out for the power supply from the original screen. I had sent the screen to the dump, but kept the power supply 'just in case'.
OOTB I thought the replacement screen was a bit dim, but I think that has been a power supply issue from the start. Swapping out the power supply fixed the flickering, and the screen was quite a bit brighter, and it worked fine up until Friday night when I turned the screen off. Then yesterday, no amount of messing around with the power supply, the app permissions, or resetting the bluetooth controller would wake the screen up. Switched the power supply back to the one that flickers last night. That at least confirmed that the screen itself was functioning yesterday, and now the flickering/dim power supply is stone cold
this morning, too! I have a new 12V/5A power supply arriving from Amazon today. If I burn through that one as well I will just break out the multimeter and see if I can figure out what's going on. Not that LEDs draw a ton of power, but I am wondering if the screen is too much for the supplied cheap power supply. Who knows?
All that said, I do love the screen itself, and am glad I could find one. This one is ARC's RGB version, so the top and bottom of the screen can be independently color and brightness adjusted. I started out with it all white, but I actually like it with a base pale cyan blue at the bottom, too. It really does help to accentuate depth in the tank, and now the tank looks really weird when the backlight is off so I am really hoping this new power supply makes it less glitchy
My schedule isn't quite so ridiculous today, so I will check it again tonight before the CO2 switches off. Brighter light does make it easier, but I am probably still reading it a little high.70 seemed crazy high though, for not even a full pH drop, which is why I didn't believe that value.
I've had the kit for 20 years, but I got refill reagents for Christmas. My base reagent expired Feb 2026 and at this point, it's a bit too late to complain. However, its sodium hydroxide. I think it will be OK. I recently had to re-set my CO2 and my Erio quinguangulare has started back growing again, so my CO2 must be OK. Its notoriously picky. Yeah, if I had just bought it, I'd be contacting customer support, but as it is, I'll make do. Glad you posted your reply to Jackson.
