NICREW ClassicLED Plus Aquarium Light 21 Watts

 I did read reviews and got an idea of the features of the NICREW ClassicLED Plus. The 24” light fits perfectly to the 20 gallon. I use the 48” and a 24” on the 75 gallon.

The NICREW ClassicLED has 2 timers. One for the white/red/green bulbs and the other for the blue lights. The easy to use wired control allows the user to control the brightness of each of the two banks independently. Also, each bank of LEDs have their own timer. For sunrise and sunset the timer can be set to increase and decrease on a 15 or 30 minute setting.

The settings on my control allow the blue light to turn on at 6:30am and slowly increase to 68% intensity. It is a beautiful morning look as the guppies awake. At 8am the white/red/green bank turns on and increases gently to 33% intensity. At 7pm the white/red/green bank decreases in intensity and at 7:30pm the blue light decreases in intensity over the next 18 minutes. I have my sunrise/sunset timer on 30 minutes but the intensity is only 68% so it takes 18 minutes to get to zero intensity.

The proportion that I have chosen in light intensity enhances the guppy’s colors while it still is promoting excellent plant growth. I do not use CO2 but I do use SeaChem Flourish and Flourish Advance. These lights are very bright. I have a 48” and a 24” on the 75 gallon because my floating plants are in the rear right corner of the aquarium and I don’t use the full glass tops.

I wanted an LED that had intensity adjustment and was designed for aquarium plants. I am so pleased with the two separate timers and sunrise/sunset mode. The three separate units turn on/off simultaneously.. NICREW ClassicLED Plus is very versatile!

This is the second Nicrew light I have purchased for my aquariums. I originally purchased the Classic model for my 15 gallon tank and I liked it so much I came back and purchased a Classic Plus for my 56 gallon. Both are quality lights, well built with excellent output. This one is solid aluminum construction with extendable brackets – in fact it came with two types of brackets, one for thin framed aquariums and another for thicker frames which is very nice. It has a switch that allows you to go from full spectrum to blue only for a nighttime effect but I don’t use it since all my lights are on timers. It does give a nice look though if that’s what you’re going for.

A comment about customer service:
I have been absolutely amazed at the quality of the customer service at Nicrew and will probably be buying products from them for a long time because of it. When I ordered my second light it arrived with a dead transformer. I knew it was the transformer because I plugged the light in with the transformer from my previous purchase and it worked fine. So I contacted customer service and asked them to send me a new transformer. Because the item is fulfilled by Amazon they aren’t able to send out transformers without a light so they asked me if I would be alright with them sending me out a return from someone else’s order – their logic was that it probably wasn’t returned for a dead transformer so I could just take the transformer from that package and have a working light and this way they wouldn’t have to waste an entire working light. That sounded like a good plan to me so I agreed it was worth the risk.

They immediately sent out the package via UPS but UPS lost it. I eventually saw the tracking slip and it was terrible. UPS sent it all the way from Arizona to Virginia then from Virginia to Washington state, then to Ohio and Illinois and West Virginia before finally making it back to Virginia again. This was completely the fault of UPS – Nicrew had nothing to do with the lost package, but they felt so bad about it that they sent me a really nice algae scraper as a gift. Ironically when the return light arrived the person who had returned it hadn’t bothered to put all the pieces back in so it arrived without the transformer I needed.

I contacted Nicrew again and told them the plan hadn’t worked, and once again they felt terrible about it, apologizing for wasting so much of my time (even though 90% of the wasted time was actually UPS not Nicrew!). At that point they decided to send me a brand new light and told me I didn’t even need to bother returning the two lights they had already sent me – both of which worked, they just didn’t have working transformers! So I now have three working lights, even though I can only plug in one at a time, and an algae scraper. Amazing! And through it all the Nicrew representative was very nice and quickly responded to all of my messages. They are in a different time zone so most of their responses came in the middle of the night, but they responded to every single email and even periodically checked up on the progress when I hadn’t emailed them in a couple of days while waiting on UPS.

Really a great experience despite the problems, I happily recommend buying this and any other Nicrew product you may be interested in.

Update: it has not been very long that it is in use but my plants are improving and ones that would turn red in good light are doing just that. Very very happy with this light. My Amazon plants are getting really dark green too. They were doing really poorly before.

I had a fluorescent fixture before and it was not bright and there were shadows in the tank. Switching out to this light and it is really nice and bright. Simple to setup if you follow the directions. I did not change the brightness as it is bright enough. Really hope it supports my live plants as they were visibly struggling under the original light.

It came in the original packing which was sufficient for the light. I have been quite happy with all the lights I have purchased from them and won’t hesitate to switch out my submersible in my 5 gallon planted to one of these down the road.

I’m using this unit (30″ – 36″ NICREW ClassicLED Plus Planted Aquarium Light, Full Spectrum LED Fish Tank Light for Freshwater Plants) with NICREW’s Single Channel Timer on a SeaClear 50-Gallon acrylic aquarium in conjunction with the NICREW ClassicLED Gen 2 (36″ – 48″) Dimmable LED Fish Tank Light with NICREW’s 2-Channel Timer. In my opinion, this set-up allows me to program an optimal 9 hours of daily light for the plants with a half hour of “ramp up” time and a half hour of “ramp down” time included. I am also injecting CO2, set via timer, to begin 15 minutes before the lights come on and turn off 15 minutes before the lights go out.

To prevent and/or reduce condensation inside these light fixtures, I purchased quarter inch thick clear cast acrylic (which resists “warping” better than thinner acrylic and happens to be the same thickness used for the tank’s construction), sized to cover the majority of the top of the tank, then added a 1.5″ tall “backsplash” of the same material to the back edge length with super glue. This prevents the power filter from splashing water onto the light fixtures that will be placed over this acrylic “cover”. Next I added “feet” (bump-ons) to the acrylic so that it wouldn’t sit flush on top of the aquarium. My final step was to “round off” all the sharp edges with sandpaper. The total cost for this was less than $50.

After that it was a simple matter of placing both light fixtures on top and moving on to programming their respective timers which, although it seemed to be a daunting task to me at first, became easier for me with more “hands-on” practice. NICREW also includes a video on the product page that shows how to program the timer.

Overall, these light fixtures are cost effective and work as they’re supposed to… my plants are growing very well! Although I don’t know how long they’ll last, based on the measures I took (listed above), I expect them to last for a long time. Also… before I do anything that involves moving these fixtures, I make sure to turn them off for at least 15 minutes prior.

I would definitely recommend these! As a matter of fact, I am setting up two more aquariums and have already purchased more of these light fixtures in the appropriate sizes I’ll need.