# What lighting should I get?



## MRBLUBS (Sep 10, 2011)

Hello,
So I Had a twenty gallon fishtank with the basic flourescent lighting of 15 watts and had plants like Amazon sword java fern and anubius. The tank was getting really old and the aquarium hood eventually blew out. So insted of buying a whole new hood and stuff I got a brand new Marineland LED 20 kit.
I was pretty happy with it and the lighting looked really good. It never mentioned the wattage of the LEDS any were on the box so I went to the net. Some where I read each LED was 1 watt. So making the whole thing above 40 watts. So I was pretty happy and got my tank readybfor cycling and got lots of plants. Such as giant hygro, java fern, anubius, crypt, wusteria, red ludwigia, Amazon sword, saggiteria platphilla, and lermina or somthing like that (looks like money wort).
Most of these as you know need high to medium light which I thought I had.
Anyway, I emailed Marineland and asked for the wattage to be sure and they replied that the total wattage of all the LEDS IS 5 WATTS! Then I googled marineland LEDs and found out there terrible for sustaining any plants at all. So Im pretty chapped about that. So now I want to get my lighting to at least 40 watts but Honestly dont know what to do....
This is my first time trying high light plant ls and Dont really know what to buy
I read about T5s and thought I could at that hood to my tank but its $150 which is more then what I paid for for the tank :\
So what do I do? And what lighting hood system do you reccomend?
Thanks


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## Cavan Allen (Jul 22, 2004)

I have a fixture I made for my 40 breeder that I constructed with parts from rapidled. Building your own really is the way to go. It's very important that you pick the right mix of LEDs, spread them out as evenly as you can (even if that means using more than the recommended number) and... integrating a dimmer. Especially that last part! If you do all of that, you'll have beautiful, shimmering light that's as weak or strong as you want it to be. Two years later and mine is still growing strong. And no bulb replacements! I can fill in particulars if you want.


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

Caven I will agree with you completely. About 6 years ago I built my first LED lighting system and since then have built at least a dozen of them. In the past they were all for reef tanks but now I'm converting to fresh water plated tanks. 

The only fresh water fixture I have running now is a strip lighting 6 to gallon tanks that are lined up. I was shocked when I only used 2.5 Watts per gallon and I got Hornsworth growing like crazy in these tanks. My plans right now are two other fixtures one for 5 15 gallon tanks running about 4 watts per tank and another for a pair of 40 breeder tanks that will be pushing between 30 and 45 watts into each of these tanks with an assortment of plants. 

But from past experience with planted tanks the selection of LED's is very important. Your not just worried about the total quantity of light but also the blue/red balance. 
I have found an equal amount of Neutral Whites (4,200K) and Cool Whites (6,200K) seems to work great. If you use all Cool Whites the algae growth starts getting hard to control, and you need more total wattage to get enough red light. 

One thing that I have heard of some people doing is running the cool whites and supplementing with a few red LED's. However the Red LED's are very narrow spectrum and it would really take red-orange, red, and deep red to cover the entire range of red light needed by plants. 

On the dimming circuitry for an initial fixture this is not a bad idea. But if you know what your doing you can use either 5 or 10 Watt LED's and simply select different fixed drivers to run them at the power rating you need them to run. If you look at the cost difference fixed drivers are in the $20 to $25 price range, while dimmable drivers plus the dimming circuitry will easily hit $50 per channel. 

Going back to Aarons original post I would recommend at least a 20 Watt but no more than a 30 Watt LED fixture using the latest Cree LED's XP-G2. These are considerably brighter than older LED's XP-G or XP-E, and very similar to the higher cost XM-L. You can run the XP-G2 on any driver dependent on how bright you want them at 1,500ma or less. At 1,500ma they are 5 Watt, at 1,300ma they are about 4 Watt, at 1050ma they are 3 Watt, at 700 ma roughly 2 Watt and at 350 ma they are 1 watt. I personally would run 8 of the XP-G2 LED's with a 1050ma driver initially for about 24 Watts of lighting. If you need to adjust it from there a quick $20 driver change can increase or decrease your lighting level. 

If you need any help or advise on building your won either ask here or PM me. I have help many in the past doing reef lighting which is much more intense than what you need.


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## Cavan Allen (Jul 22, 2004)

TropTrea said:


> But from past experience with planted tanks the selection of LED's is very important. Your not just worried about the total quantity of light but also the blue/red balance.
> I have found an equal amount of Neutral Whites (4,200K) and Cool Whites (6,200K) seems to work great. If you use all Cool Whites the algae growth starts getting hard to control, and you need more total wattage to get enough red light.


I have also used a mix of neutral and cool whites. I have 24 LEDs on my fixture with a mix of those and 4 royal blues. Looks good, grows plants. 



TropTrea said:


> One thing that I have heard of some people doing is running the cool whites and supplementing with a few red LED's. However the Red LED's are very narrow spectrum and it would really take red-orange, red, and deep red to cover the entire range of red light needed by plants.


I have heard of that too, and that it can promote algae growth and makes plants leggy. Whether there's any truth to that, I don't know. I just know what works, as you do.



TropTrea said:


> On the dimming circuitry for an initial fixture this is not a bad idea. But if you know what your doing you can use either 5 or 10 Watt LED's and simply select different fixed drivers to run them at the power rating you need them to run. If you look at the cost difference fixed drivers are in the $20 to $25 price range, while dimmable drivers plus the dimming circuitry will easily hit $50 per channel.


I will readily admit that you have much more expertise with this, but in my case, it wasn't much more money to add in the dimmer, and it's REALLY convenient to just hit a few buttons to dim or raise light intensity.


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## MRBLUBS (Sep 10, 2011)

Thanks for all the replies!
Never thought I could actually make lights for my tank!
How much would something like that cost? 
And I need a ton of help and advise on everything (if thats ok) as I only understood half of what you guys said 
Sorry newbie here........


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## MRBLUBS (Sep 10, 2011)

http://m.ebay.com/itm/360916089394 
I was doing some research online about DIY lighting for planted tanks and came to a youtube video where this guy bought LED floodlights from ebay and his tank looked fantastic
So I searched them up on ebay and there pretty cheap 
Do these work good and Has anyone ever used these? And would two (or one) of these be good enough for my tank?

Also, in my tank the lindernia's leaves are starting to melt away Iinto clear leves....
The stems still seem Ok so will these eventually bounce back?

Thanks


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## Cavan Allen (Jul 22, 2004)

Hard to say. I can only comment on things with which I have direct experience. Poke around here a bit:
http://www.rapidled.com/ 
I'd go with a soldierless kit. You will need a heat sink/s and a dimmer as well. And some means of hanging/containing the light.

Hard to say about your plants without a thorough description of what's going on. Maybe start a help thread in the New to Planted Aquariums forum? We can help you with the light-specific stuff here.


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## MRBLUBS (Sep 10, 2011)

Ah that makes sense
Thanks for all the help! Hopefully I can get it up and running soon.


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

MRBLUBS said:


> http://m.ebay.com/itm/360916089394
> I was doing some research online about DIY lighting for planted tanks and came to a youtube video where this guy bought LED floodlights from ebay and his tank looked fantastic
> So I searched them up on ebay and there pretty cheap
> Do these work good and Has anyone ever used these? And would two (or one) of these be good enough for my tank?
> ...


There are some individuals that love these spot lights on there tanks. While other have tried them and hated them. The big difference in my mind is how tall the tank is and how high above the tank your hanging the lights. If they are to close to the substrate you will get a spot light effect with very harsh shadows. If you raise them high enough over the tank and have enough of them they work good when you have multiple spots hitting any point on the substrate from multiple angles. Much easier achieved with several single LED's spread top.


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

Cavan Allen said:


> Hard to say. I can only comment on things with which I have direct experience. Poke around here a bit:
> http://www.rapidled.com/
> I'd go with a soldierless kit. You will need a heat sink/s and a dimmer as well. And some means of hanging/containing the light.
> 
> Hard to say about your plants without a thorough description of what's going on. Maybe start a help thread in the New to Planted Aquariums forum? We can help you with the light-specific stuff here.


Yes I would say I get 80% of my LED light supplies from Rapid. But unfortunately there stock on Meanwell Drivers is very limited and I usually end up going to other sources for drivers.

Yes you need a heat sink. However I also found a great lower cost alternative that is more flexable for your designing is to go to a local metal supplier and pick up 1" X 2" Channel Aluminum for the Heat Sinks. With this you can run the leds about 4" apart without the need for cooling fans. If you run them up to 5 watts each then you will need 5 or 6 inch spacing between them.

Calvin on the Blue LED's. I believe it is a matter of a balancing act. I did a temporary conversion and have a 10 gallon tank with 3 watts of neutral white and 3 watts of Royal Blue lighting on it. Doing 30% RO water changes daily on it the water in that tank is like pea soup dark green. The tank right next to it has two neutral white at 3 watts each and is crystal clear with hornworth and Ananias growing like crazy. Your ratio of 12 whites to 1 blue is probably not creating enough blue to give issues. But some commercial lights either have no blues or seem to jump to a 1 to 1 ratio that is way to much blue for fresh water.


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## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

I've never built my own LED system. I think I'll have to give it a try one day. 

So you both get all your parts from that site? Is the power supply for sale there or do you get it from another place? That has always been what I've been concerned about - not having the correct power supply.


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## misant777 (Mar 21, 2014)

I like Rapid LED's kits as demonstrated here.





I think I'll get one simply due to the ease of having everything all in one place. There's several things I'm going to have to consider. The panes of glass on my 3 aquarium covers are going to have to have a 6"x20" light on each one. Rapid LED happens to have heatsinks in that size. I think I'll silver plate or otherwise line the heatsinks to be more reflective as black isn't that great a choice, unless that's acting as part of the thermal diffusion. Black is ideal for that, even if it's crap for photons.

Anyway, I don't want to break the glass, so I'll have to pay close attention to that. I'll just get the LED layout penciled in and make sure I've got a sanded, circular spot for each LED to adhere to. I should be able to get a nice mix of spectra, like the guy in the video there. 20 on each of the 3 heatsinks, bridging the top aquarium structural struts with a 5" LED link, much like the 3" versions shown in the video.

It looks like this will demand 4 separate drivers and I can take care of the rheostat dimmer, but again, convenience... So I'll have 60 LED's, comprised of a mix of 4 spectral spreads. I suppose I can rewire the 120v in order to gang all the drivers together in parallel, with the exception of maybe the driver for the blue LEDs, which I can put on a timer for moonlighting or something.

Not sure if I'll need a fan for each unit yet, but if so, I was considering maybe plumbing some metal water tubing through the fins and use that to heat water instead of my heater, which I kinda need for another tank by now anyway. Maybe a Peltier junction can power a small heatsink fan as part of a self regulating, heat dependent feedback loop? 

This is still going to be expensive. More so than just buying a lower output 72" unit, but the performance, modularity and control will ultimately be worth it for future adaptability.

EDIT: Hey, you know what would be pretty neat? If someone who's got one of the drivers, similar to the ones in that video, and would be willing to pop the top off it and take pictures of the components and/or circuit board artwork. I'd like to see if it wouldn't be fairly easy to just put 3, 4 or more channels all on one board and program/control the little bastage with an arduino nano interface.


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

@misant777
Yes I do use Rapid for most of my LED supplies. But not all by any means.
1. For heat sinks and hardware I go to the local metal supply store. I use 1" X 2" channel aluminum that really works good for this. 
2. Rapid has a limited number of meanwell drivers that handle. If they list the driver I need great but often I can find a less expensive driver for many applications. The thing though is if your saving $4.00 on a driver and only need 2 of them then the extra $15 shipping makes buying everything at once well worth it.

Looking at the set up of LED this individual used of 40 LED's and if is running all of them at just 3 Watts each that is 120 Watts of LED power. For a fresh water tank this is a lot of LED light for even high light demanding plants. 

I also would not add nearly the amount of blue LED's for fresh water that he did. The low point in the white LED power spectrum is in the 490 to 500nm rang not the 455 nm range that he is adding the royal blues. If you want to supplement that range simply add some cyan LED's but do so very sparingly as the light is concentrated into one peak not across the spectrum like in the white LED's. 

One thing many people do with LED's is start basic then at a later date modify the system to get fancier. You can get much fancier than what this individual did and you get it much simpler and less costly.

For a 72" long tank I'd start with a pair of 6' channels. This would allow you to go up to 36 LED's and cost you only about $40.00. Initially split your drivers up with 18 neutral whites and 18 Cool Whites. Cost about $144. You will need 3 driver I recommend getting LPC 60-1040's with 12 LED's on each driver. This will drive them at a full 3 Watts each. cost about $70 for the three. Then all you have left is some hardware cost usually around $20.00.

When you wite them up run 12 Neutrals on one driver, 12 Cool Whites an another drive and then split the remainder on the other driver. If later you want to add blue do so by replacing some of the cool whites on the driver with 12 CW's. . If you want to boast the red end do so by replacing some of the neutral whites on the Driver with 12 NW's.


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## misant777 (Mar 21, 2014)

TropTrea: Thank you for the reply!

I'm really tired right now, so I'm probably misunderstanding, but what width on the 6 foot long channels are you suggesting I get? 2"

Here are the measurements on my glass covers & support struts.

The glass is 22" long (I was only gonna use about 20", but hey, whatever works...) and the struts are 2" wide. 

So, are you saying to put a 2" x 20" (maybe) channel on each glass pane, with maybe 2 rows of mixed LEDs, with every LED being connected with 3" conductors, thereby fitting 12 LED's (two rows of 6) over 18 of the 20 inches of channel. And 3 channels, one for every glass pane. With a driver for each one.... uh... yeah. Right?  (I'm really tired)


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

I would run the Channels the entire length of the tank. But when you epoxy the LED's on them watch that you do not put them over the braces.


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## misant777 (Mar 21, 2014)

Would regular 1/8" thick, C channel aluminum be suitable for heat dissipation?

I'm wondering if DigiKey wouldn't be one of the best places to go for bulk LEDs and drivers.


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

misant777 said:


> Would regular 1/8" thick, C channel aluminum be suitable for heat dissipation?
> 
> I'm wondering if DigiKey wouldn't be one of the best places to go for bulk LEDs and drivers.


Unless your good at soldering under a microscope your better off going to a place like RapidLED and getting the LED's mounted on a star. Yes Digikey is cheaper but they have minimum quantities and do not stock all the LEd's. They are a fair source for drivers with more offering than Rapid but you have to watch the Prices. TRW Electronics has the best selection of Meanwell Drivers.

Look under Meanwells web p[age to find the LED Drivers you want to use. Then search on that driver to find the best price. Monday source A is the best peice but Thursday someone else might have a better price.

Yes on the C channel. Thickness is not the factor but surface area. They recommend 9 square inches per watt of surface area without fans. However I gone as low as 6 square inches without problems. The rails were only warm to the touch. With the 1" X 2" Channels you get roughly 8 square inches per inch of lenght. So on a 48" long piece you have roughly 384 square inches of surface area. I have run 60 watts of LED's on one of those which is 6.4 square inches of surface area per Watt.

As far a LED's are concerned I like to use CREE LED's when ever possible. Some people like to use Phillips. Each has there advantages and disadvantages. Avoid the Chineese LED's as different plants have different quality standards and they are usually far from as efficient as as Cree or Philips LED's.


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