Aqua one led lighting

Aquarium Decor, DIY and Equipment.
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Clownman
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So things have changed since I last set up a tank, led lighting being one of them.

Can anyone advise on how good the standard aqua one lighting is on these new fangled tanks.
From what I can see there are lots of different colour temp LEDs, and blue ones that I can turn on when the main light is off. I just wonder if it's powerful enough for decent plant growth, I don't really want to venture down the co2 injection route again for plants though
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I have one that came with my tank and says it is 30W but I found plants exposed to sunlight grew much faster, so all along one side of the tank closest to the window.
I swapped it for a cheapish 45W LED light from eBay and growth is now much more even throughout the tank.
Not sure if my problem was too much sunlight or not enough LED but I noticed an improvement when I changed it. This is a low tech tank with liquid carbon (If that makes a difference).
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Drifty
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all you need to know for plants is...
The light in kelvin...
What the depth of the tank...
Watts don't matter so much for the plants...
Watts is how much electric it going to use...
What you want to know is what the Kelvin is in a light system and depth...
4500k at 35cm depth will give you slow growth (we talking a year down the line)...
where a 6500k at 35cm depth will give you lush growth (we talking weeks a month most)...
also a 4500k at 35cm depth will not give you nice red plants like it says it does where a 6500k will get at pink and maybe red.
And last thing is volume of water and number of plants and type of plants so you can work out how much fertilizer to put in and what type...
For examples moss, java, anything that don't have roots would be better with liquid Fertilizer...
Where roots plants would do better with root tabs.

Hope that helps in some way :)
This is my experience from my own tank and also I have no co2.
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Stephen
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I have a Juwel Lido 120 which is 60cm tall.
I have 2 x 590mm Juwel LED tubes, one is LED Nature (6500k) and the other is LED Colour (4425k), both are only 14W.
My plant growth is amazing (without CO2), my light are on for only 6 hours a day.

From this:
(click image to enlarge)
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To this in only 3 weeks
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and to this after only 8 weeks
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In a low-tech system (no CO2) then the lighting should be somewhere between 5500k & 6500k otherwise you'll have algae issues.
In a high-tech system the lighting can be higher but you'll need CO2 and fertiliser.

All the best
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4 x Cupid Cichlids, 14 x Cory caudimaculatus, 13 x Cory sterbai 52 x Reed Tetra, 4 x Honeycomb Bristlenose (L519)

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Martinspuddle
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Aqua One freshwater LED lights from what I understand are pretty reasonable and you shouldn't to much trouble growing plants if you follow the Tropica guide sticking to 'easy' plant species.

Link: tropica

My current planted aquarium (not a Aqua One aquarium) has just two Fluval AquaSky 33w LEDs, a mature substrate of gravel and JBL Sansibar sand mixed with tropica aquarium soil powder capped with river sand. Daily dosing of fertilizers, 10 x water flow and no Co2 injection.

Image
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Puddles aquarium at four months old.

As a side note, LED is measured in 'Lumens' tropica web page on lighting below.

tropica - Light
WARNING - DO NOT BREED, FEED OR PET THE PUDDLE! :dodgy2:
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Lo1
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Clownman wrote: Sat Sep 04, 2021 16:56 pm So things have changed since I last set up a tank, led lighting being one of them.

Can anyone advise on how good the standard aqua one lighting is on these new fangled tanks.
From what I can see there are lots of different colour temp LEDs, and blue ones that I can turn on when the main light is off. I just wonder if it's powerful enough for decent plant growth, I don't really want to venture down the co2 injection route again for plants though
You may find this video help:

https://youtu.be/CGV_FiG0tyw
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Eheim powerLED+ fresh plants,
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Co2 Art PRO-SE.
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I've read lots about how lumens are most important, then ignore that and PAR is most important, then ignore that and PUR is the only thing that matters.
I've also seen reports that say it makes little difference what LED light you have and LED floodlights work perfectly well.
There's usually a huge amount of marketing in this hobby to justify big brands charging 5x the price of unbranded stuff that looks almost the same, and often it does do the same job.
I don't trust flashy marketing without tests to back it up, usually the only published tests are by hobbyists and they are mostly inconclusive and a bit flawed.
The only measurable difference for most people is input power. The spectrum will make a difference but as has been shown even LED floodlights work pretty well.
There are 2 reasons I didn't think Fluval lights were worth the money.
1 they buy LEDs and stick them in their own box, the same as anyone else.
2 They use wide beam LEDs so you don't need to string them up high to get full coverage at the substrate, fine for a shallow tank but mine is a tall one so most of that light is just going to hit the sides where it may or may not bounce back into the tank.
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