Another LED thread....

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hage0245

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Dec 8, 2010
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I recently posted a thread regarding the best lighting system for my 55 gallon freshwater tank that is currently lightly planted but will soon (hopefully) be moderately/heavily planted with low/medium light plants. I was almost sold on the dual 48" T5 HO setup for like $65 until......

I researched LED lighting. It looks to be the aquarium lighting system of the future and I don't want to be left in the dust!

Are there any LED setups for a tank of my size that don't cost hundreds of dollars or don't involve an electrical engineering degree? Based on what I have read, those LED flood lights sold at Home Depot and other stores aren't suitable for growing plants, but there has to be LED setups sold for other purposes that would work for an aquarium, or am I just wishful thinking?

Should I just knock off the researching and stick to my original plan of 108 watts of T5 HO or is LED worth trying? Any input would be great!!! Thanks in advance.
 

dbosman

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Dec 5, 2010
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Light penetration will be the issue for a 55.
At this point a decent T5 fixture would probably be the simplest solution.
In two years, I'll bet the question will have more answers.
 

rockhoe14er

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unless you want to throw down a lot of money and time to do more research i would just stick with the T5HO. It's easy. The only real benifit of LED's is that the lights burn pretty cold so you will never have to replace them and your electric bill will be a lot lower. However, unless you want to build a fixture yourself which still will cost around 150 dollars (or you can buy one already assembled for close to 900 dollars) i'd just go with the easier solution and get some T5HO.
 

tolawdjk

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Sep 8, 2010
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+1 to above, and I'm in your same boat. You have to look at it a couple ways though. Your initial cost is going to be higher on the LED front, but you recoup that on the back end in electricity and bulb replacement costs.

Even in the $60 buck range for the fixture, you are looking at $30-$50 for bulbs, and roughly that much in outlay every year for replacement bulbs. LED's, I think, I typically are advertised in the 50,000 to 70,000 hour lifetime rate. With a DIY build you would be able to swap out a bad bulb or bulb strip, but some of the pre packaged systems would require you to buy an entire new fixture.

I know I was looking at the Marineland Double Brights, but found that general opinion was that at 18" of depth, light to substrate, I wouldn't have sufficient light penetration. Marineland is advertising a triple bright for reefs, but I haven't heard what they might do for deeper planted freshwater tanks.
 

Subroto

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Jan 22, 2011
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It definitely looks its worth, DoctaQ. I have in the planning stage a DIY system for my 72"x24"x24" FW planted tank. I do not plan to add any weather simulating controller but I would love to have dimming control. A 'moonlight' for night viewing is what I have in mind as well, though I have not been able to figure out whether that would disturb the resting phase of the plants, making them use CO2 from the water column during night. I don't want that to happen as I don't intend to use the CO2 24/7.

Finally, and perhaps the most important for me, how does the visual appeal of an LED-lit planted aquarium compare with tri-phosphor, full-spectrum equiped system? Would the LED's shift and emphasis to the blue and red spectrum, minimising the yellow and green spectrum, make the plants look 'washed out'?

Any suggestion/idea/advice/link to helpful threads in AC or other planted tank forum would be very much appreciated.

Thanks
 

DoctaQ

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Dec 12, 2008
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you can look at my tank thread as it has pictures when i had a 12k pc and when i switched to led, the pictures are a fairly accurate rep of what it looks like irl

in a way you are right about the colors being washed out because leds do not produce much green light, which in itself causes leds to have high par vs lumens . visually, a high light led tank will look dimmer but the light will be very bright to plants. green light not helping plants grow much but they make them look greener to the eye . the difference however is very subtle, even side by side someone would probably have to point it out to you aside from the dimness. the property we are talking about is color rendering
 

dundadundun

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Jan 21, 2009
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haha... every time i think doctaq has faded away into the mist, someone posts a thread about led lighting a planted tank... and there he is. for the little bit of posting docta does, he deserves a big thanks for helping out where he can and being diligent over all this time.

p.s. ... that thread should be included in the sticky somewhere... EHEM...
 
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