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Aqueon Optibright Fire! + Some Advice


FunkSolid
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I have two 48" Optibright fixtures and yesterday one of the power supplies decided to catch fire. I was fortunate to be in my office quietly studying when I heard a "snap crackle and pop". The lights on my 120 instantly flickered out, so I jumped up and yanked the cord out of my light timer. It was smoking and had a hole in the side of the unit.

I inspected the surroundings, and there is nothing on my end that would cause this. No water, no salt residues, nothing. I called Aqueon this morning and emailed them pictures of everything. I appreciate that these units are made in Wisconsin, but the power supplies are made in you know where. I also wanted to mention that the power supplies to these units run a lot hotter than the rest of my LEDs. They are substantially hotter than the more powerful LEDs on my planted tank which feel slightly warmer than room temperature, but the Optibrights feel hot.

I have been meaning to put my tanks on a GFCI circuit breaker...

( Watch this 120 second video ) and now i'm totally convinced that doing it could prevent my house from potentially burning down. It would certainly have cut the power in milliseconds if I was not home. I admit I have been ignoring my gut feeling on the GFCI's and it makes me sick thinking about this fire if I was not home. Please consider this for your own setups.

I will keep this updated with Aqueons responses.

Andrew

Edited by FunkSolid
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  • 2 weeks later...

Well after a few phone calls and emails, Aqueon is really not giving me the warm fuzzies. They claim the unit worked as designed and when it overheated, it cut off its own power and the smoking hole in the side was not a big deal, and posed no combustible risk. They said they could ship me out a new power-supply which will arrive in 2-3 weeks. I know I bought one of the cheapest LED units you can buy (I actually bought two on 25% off so they were too cheap to pass on), but their customer service, and complete lack of respect for smoke and heat really makes me ill. Despite my indignation I dont have the cash to replace multiple 48" LED's right now, so thats the end of this story.

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AND THE PLOT THICKENS!

So the brand new power converter Aqueon sent me to replace the one that caught fire... DIED! Well it didnt actually go into asystole death, just v-Tach strobe light mode, which is dead to me. So I emailed my contact again but this time I armed myself with a video of the defect and full disclosure of my setup. They are now sending me a brand new light (which is kinda cool) but refuse to acknowledge their Dongguan Hengyue Industrial Co., Ltd. power supplies are pieces of _ _ _ _.

It took hours of searching and about 10 phone calls to find it, but I did find another company that makes the same power supply. Shipped to my door with exchange rates its looking to be 25 Canadian Pesos. Go HERE if your interested in it. If this replacement works, i'm gonna swap them all out to hopefully end this saga.

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  • 3 months later...

I recently got the USA Satellite Plus Pro LED light. Definitely not one of the cheap ones but I was having the LED act like a strobe when run at full power and running ok but with very hot power supply when run at 75% of full power. Looking at the power supply I noticed its volt/amperage combination was not nearly enough to drive this 60 watt LED light. Communicating with the manufacturer was not very efficient (but I didn't try very hard. Instead I got it sorted out by going back to Big Al's. It turns out the power supply was meant for one of the much smaller units and not for my 48" light. They swapped out the power supply for one with the right specifications and since then it has been running like a charm. I expect the problem resulted from it being returned by a customer with the wrong power supply or someone in the assembly plant having a severe caffeine deficiency.

Bart

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  • 1 month later...

I just got an 48" Optibright plus for a new 48x24x16" tank I am setting up. I had forgotten about this post so hope they have fixed the power supply issue by now. It did work fine right out of the box and I am actually quite impressed by the unit. About 1/3rd the lumens output as the Current USA satellite plus pro that I have for my 24" tall tank, but also about 1/3rd of the price and it has a build-in timer and sunset/sunrise feature. None of this matters if it doesn't live long but if it is durable then I think this is a great light for shallower tanks or tanks that only need moderate amounts of light.

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As mentioned above, the actual LED portion of these lights have been fine for me, but the power supplies have been ridiculous. They are practically biodegradable, and I have replaced 5, yes 5 of the power supplies! Aqueon sent me a "Plus" (updated model) because of the insane trouble I was having, and it seems to be doing a lot better. I even bought a 3rd party power supply from "super power supply.com" and it failed a month ago, but they also sent me a new one under warranty.

I have all these units plugged into a power bar, which is attached to a wall behind the tank. Its about 30" above the tank with zero water exposure, and has good airflow to help dissipate the heat. I also have a few other led power supplies plugged into that bar that have not failed so I dont think its a issue with the bar. I even swapped it out for a different one and still had issues.

Hopefully the plus has some differences to help in longevity.

Edited by FunkSolid
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I actually got a second 30" one for my new 20G long tank. I'll report if either of them fails and indeed hope that the newer model doesn't use the flimsy power supplies.

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