# AAAAGGGGGHHHHHH....Lighting!!!!!



## Rakaal (Mar 10, 2016)

Has anyone found that finding the proper lighting for your planted tank to be incredibly infuriating. I just want to know what it the best light for my configuration. I am not a wpg guy, I am not a par guy, I am not a lumens guy, I AM a what the hell is gonna work guy.

I appreciate all the science and mumbo jumbo that goes behind the what works best for a specific application. I am not lost on the technical talk or the wpg/par/lumens debate. I get it. It is not an exact thing and there is a high degree of subjugation in the category.

I am a pretty regular dude that happens to have become an aquarium geek. I like all of them. I happen to really like the planted variety. I have a college degree in bio/chem. However, my profession is about as far from anything bio/chem related that you can imagine. In full disclosure its been about 20 years since I have tit-rated anything or used any sort of microscope. I am not professing to be a biological genius.

I am however having difficulty in lighting my aquarium. I have a 60 Gal Marineland Cube aquarium. The dimensions are 24x24x24. I have about 3 inches of Flourite substrate and about 5 inchs of gap between my water surface and a Marineland Aquatic Plant LED Light (about 20ish inches between light and substrate).

I have found that the Marineland Light is very direct in its distribution. Meaning that it does not have a wide spread. The light impact is almost directly below the fixture.

I can overcome this in two ways. One being simply buying a second Marineland fixture. Which I am certainly willing to do.

My question is what is the *BEST * option for lighting. I will completely scrap the Marineland if needed. I am of need of a medium high to high light fixture for a 24x24x24 aquarium that is well planted (HC, S. repens, Rotala, Fissidens nobilis, Pennywort, Bacopa, Lobelia Cardinalis, Flame moss. African water fern).

I don't want the "MAXIMUM", i just want was is practical without being over or under. Fortunately, I am not limited by cost, but I don't want to spend money needlessly.

I have read there are some T5HO, Metal Halide (overkill?) and some LED's. I am having difficulty locating a specific brand/model that meets my need.

I am willing to change to whatever is the BEST alternative. I am just having difficulty in determining what that is.

Any and all recommendations are requested.


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## neilshieh (Jun 24, 2010)

I'm no lighting expert, I grow all of my plants with cfl bulbs in parabolic work light fixtures and I've been able to grow high light plants with 0 problems. But if you're looking for a LED option, I suggest Finnex lights. 
Finnex 24/7 24" (http://www.amazon.com/Finnex-Planted-Automated-Aquarium-Controller/dp/B00U0HMWLI) should fit your needs just fine. Not sure how well the HC will do, you may want to consider using a lower light carpeting plant because the rest of the plants you listed aren't light demanding at all. Good candidates to replace HC would be marsilea sp. (crenata, minuta, quadrifolia, hirsuta), Micranthemum 'Monte Carlo', hydrocotyle tripartita. If you use one of these plants for foreground you could just do a low-med tech tank and have everything grow nicely and not have to worry about co2 injection and crazy fert dosing regimes and what not.


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## BruceF (Aug 5, 2011)

I agree about the Finnex at this point but you may need two of them. Recently I have started using "daylight" led flood lights and spot lights from home depot. These are about 18 dollars a shot but I am pretty happy with the results at the moment. I am using 2 of them on a 29g tank. 

One note, I am not a big fan of the Finnes planted+ you don't really gain much with all this remote control bs. A combo of the Fug ray and the Monster Ray is great light for an aquarium imho.


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## Aquaticz (May 22, 2009)

BruceF said:


> snipped
> 
> One note, I am not a big fan of the Finnes planted+ you don't really gain much with all this remote control bs. A combo of the Fug ray and the Monster Ray is great light for an aquarium imho.


On what size tank BruceF? Thx bro


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## Rakaal (Mar 10, 2016)

Does anyone have any experience with the Marineland Aquatic Plant LED? If I just added another would that solve my shading issues (light is pretty shadowed at the edges) and give the required light to grow HC?

If you are using the Finnex Ray 2 and the Monster Ray in combo do you periodically switch the light positions to evenly distribute the light from each? Or is the spread enough that it isnt necessary? Are these put on seperate timers or set up to work as one unit?

At this point adding another Marineland or starting over with two Finnex lights is about the same cost.

Just looking at the best bang for the buck with a goal of wanting to successfully grow HC (In addition to other plants). I know my current plants other than HC are not terribly demanding but I am also doing a little future planning.

Thanks


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## BruceF (Aug 5, 2011)

Aquaticz said:


> On what size tank BruceF? Thx bro


I was referring to his tank size 24X24X24.

I don't know anything about the Marineland fixtures.


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## neilshieh (Jun 24, 2010)

Now that I think about it 24x24x24 would definitely require two lights to have enough spread. Thus far the general feeling I get from posts where people have used marineland lights have generally been bad to fair. There's not enough LED's and their optics produces spotlight effects with a lot of dead space the higher up you go. Most people on a budget stick with finnex but there are other lighting solutions. I think most people use t5HO's to light deeper tanks, so that may be something to look into. 
I usually don't like linking to other forums, but for the sake of relevant current information look through these threads. I also highly suggest going to TPT to their lighting section and looking through their finnex light club threads to see what light people have on their tanks and what kind of plants they're growing. It'll give you a good idea of what you can grow at what distance. 
https://www.google.com/webhp?source...ie=UTF-8#q=24x24x24 tank site:plantedtank.net
https://www.google.com/webhp?source...=lighting+60+gallon+cube+site:plantedtank.net


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## Rakaal (Mar 10, 2016)

Here is the pic of the one Marineland...there is obvious shadowing. As far as research. I cannot seem to find where anyone says its bad or good or even mediocre. The specs from the manufacturer indicate it should work, but im not a spring chicken and realize this may not be applicable in practical applications.

Two on these are obviously needed on a 24x24x24. My tank is already planted with HC. The cost for me to either buy a second Marineland Aquatic Plant LED or buy a Finnex ray2 and Finnex Monster Ray is about exactly the same ( I should note that the finnex models do not incorporate a timer or moonlight, for those doing forum research like I did)

I am going with a second Marineland and will report back with my experience with pics. I'm pretty nervous because I am really hoping to be able to successfully grow HC, it is such a cool little plant.


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## Rakaal (Mar 10, 2016)

I went ahead and added the second Marineland Aquatic Plant LED. I do not have any experience with Finnex or any other fixture, for that matter, but I can say that this light appears to be working quite well.

I now have two on a 24 x 24 x 24 inch Marineland Cube. The distance from fixture to lowest substrate ( where the HC is located is 20ish inches) Picture below,









I planted several plants. The most demanding according to the literature was H.C. (dwarf baby tears). I started the tank with plants about two weeks ago, it is still going through the nitrogen cycle. The HC seems to be the plant the is responding the best. It has grown out quite well with multiple "runners" horizontally and is growing some vertically. The rest of the stem plants are growing roots like mad. The flame moss is showing significant new growth.

The plants that seems to be responding the least are the "pearl grass", african water fern, and fissdens nobilis.























I am injecting CO2 with an inline reactor and using a dosing regiment with the Seachem Flourish line. My substrate is Seachem Flourite. I am using both a ph, kH, CO2 chart, and a Cal Aqua drop checker. The drop checker indicates that my CO2 level is on the money, leaning toward the high side (reference color is more yellowish than green)

PH - prior to CO2 is 7.5
PH - after CO2 is 6.4
kH - 4
Ammonia - around .25
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - minimal

The lighting period is about 5.5 hours. No algae at the moment. I do have a significant amount of "white fuzz" on the Manzanita, as evident by the photos.

I have three Zebra Danios in the tank that seem to be doing well. I also added a horned nerite snail, it hasnt moved for about 4 days, jury is still out on the snail.

Critique and comments welcome.

Thanks,

Rakaal


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## neilshieh (Jun 24, 2010)

Great looking tank! As with any new tank you can expect green dust algae and diatoms to hit and run it's cycle soon, you should start a journal so we can see the tank's progress as it matures! 

I realized I've actually never heard of the marineland aquatic plant LED light, I've only heard of the double bright and the single bright which were ill received by hobbyists for the aforementioned reasons, but if these lights work good for them! Always nice to have more lighting fixture options. Your HC seem to be doing really well, if it hasn't started to look scraggly and browning leaves then I'd say you're in the clear and can expect it to take off like a weed. I would keep your photoperiod at 5.5 hours and see how it goes for 1-3 weeks. You can of course increase the photoperiod for more growth but you might run into algae problems if your nutrient dosing can't keep up with photosynthetic demand. 
You probably already know this but the white fuzz will go away on it's own. Great job!


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## Rakaal (Mar 10, 2016)

As predicted, gda and diatom algae has arrived. They also brought their friend green hair and grey fuzz. Grey fuzz seems to have a fancy for my HC and thats about it. I'm working on calling the aquarium police to have these party poopers ejected.


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## Rakaal (Mar 10, 2016)

I called the aquarium police...and Amano Shrimp arrived. My plant growth has been explosive. The HC carpeted to the point that it became detached from the substrate. I removed most of it and started over with a few plugs. 

All, and I mean all, of the plants have grown incredibly well. I am now at the point where I need to determine whether or not its worth keeping certain varieties. The Fissidens did die completely out. Everything else went nuts. I am trimming just to keep up at least once a week.

I have apparently also become an endler breeder. It was not by design. It just happened. 
I will post some pics in a few days.


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## NinjaPilot (Jul 31, 2016)

Nice job on that tank. It seems the added light really made a difference. I changed over from CFL's to LED's this year, and it took some time for me to learn how to lower their strength and slow the growth of the plants/algae. At this point, I think I'm doing very well, without any problematic algae at all. Some on the glass but the snails get to it quickly. It has been my experience that wide angle, low power (photon push) LED lighting is a good thing. I use LED flood lamps, and until I covered the surface with duckweed, which filtered the light and ate up the extra fertilzers, I was having fast growth of plants and algae. Now everything is slow and easy. Blocking the light made a big difference with LED's for my tanks. I also had them two to three feet off the surface while I experimented with them, and the tank did very well! (5 60watt LED floods on 55g)


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