I ordered it from Marine Depot. I found it for about $20 less on Amazon after the fact. Oh well.
I couldn't ask for it to be packaged any better. It was essentially triple boxed. The regular box was wrapped in bubble wrap. The wrapped box was then wrapped in a piece of cardboard.
 |
| From Current Nova Extreme Pro |
Must be I-talian.
 |
| From Current Nova Extreme Pro |
The inner box was mounted in the second box and secured with spacers to maintain a gap between the two. The fixture was mounted in 3 Styrofoam spacers within the innermost box.
 |
| From Current Nova Extreme Pro |
Despite all of the packing one of the bulbs arrived broken.
 |
| From Current Nova Extreme Pro |
 |
| From Current Nova Extreme Pro |
I wasn't concerned about the broken bulb because I wasn't planning on using them anyway. However, it was a pain to get the broken pieces of glass out of the fixture. I heard from multiple sources that the Current bulbs should be replaced. My LFS said that their corals lost color and turned brown under them
The reflector is stamped out of a piece of highly reflective material. The reflector surrounds each bulb and reflects the light that goes out the sides of the bulbs down into the tank.
 |
| From Current Nova Extreme Pro |
 |
| From Current Nova Extreme Pro |
After installing my bulbs the fixture looked like this:
 |
| From Current Nova Extreme Pro |
The bulbs from left to right are ATI Blue Plus, Giesemann Aqua Blue+, Aqua Science Special 15000 K, Giesemann Midday, Giesemann Aqua Blue+ and ATI Blue Plus. The Aqua Science and Giesemann Midday were substitutes for a UV 75.25 and GE Starcoat respecively. It turns out that the Aqua Science special looks pretty much the same as the Giesemann Aqua Blue+.
Before placing the fixture on my tank I wanted to take some comparison photos with my 4x65 PC fixture first. For the following pictures I placed the camera on a tripod in manual exposure mode and with manual white balance. This way no camera parameters were changed between pictures.
First, is my PC fixture alone with my supplemental 6500 K bulbs turned off.
 |
| From Current Nova Extreme Pro |
In the following picture, the supplemental 6500Ks are turned on.
 |
| From Current Nova Extreme Pro |
Finally, the Nova Extreme went on the tank.
 |
| From Current Nova Extreme Pro |
Obviously the bulbs I purchased cast a very purplish tint to the tank. They are also much much brighter. Now when I take close up pictures the camera stops down the lens to f/8 and decreases the shutter speed to about 1/125 s. Previously, the lens would be wide open and the shutter speed would be about 1/40 s.
 |
| From Current Nova Extreme Pro |
Here are a few more pictures:
 |
| From Current Nova Extreme Pro |
 |
| From Current Nova Extreme Pro |
The fixture is very solid. The main housing of the fixture is made out of metal and not plastic. The legs, on the other hand, seemed a little flimsy. The manual does not include instructions on how to install the legs. It's not difficult but you need to figure it out on your own. The legs slide in through grooves. To access the grooves the acrylic shield needs to be pulled out a few inches. The shield also slides in on a different set of grooves. In order to get one of the legs on, the center brace needs to be removed since it slides into the lamp on the same grooves used by the legs.
The fans pump out a lot of warm air. Directly under the lamp you can just barely feel some warmth. I don't expect this to increase the tank temperature at all. The fans do make some noise. They are a little louder than the return pumps in my sump.
Despite the broken bulb I'm very happy with the fixture. The quality of the fixture seems very high.
