# will marineland doublebrite LED fixtures really grow plants?



## FieldsOfGreenSeaTurtles (May 3, 2011)

iv been considering purchasing the marienland doublebrite system. in fact i thought i might even go buy two systems to go above my 29 gallon. iv researched LED lighting in regards to plant growth and it seems hard to find good information. before i go and spend over $200 on lights i should at least get some positive feedback from people that they do in fact grow plants. 

so, that's the question, do marienland doublebrite LED systems produce enough light for good plant growth? 

if one system will be enough then that'll be great, i am willing to buy two though if it's needed. and to paint a picture, i intend to suspend the lights above the tank. i believe i will need very high lighting since im planing on having lots of plants. the tank should be considered in three parts 1. a jungle in the tank itself, i dont plan on pruning much, if at all 2. a nice thick layer of floating plants like duckweed and maybe some water lettuce (Pistia stratiotes) and 3. emersed plants in a hang on back filter. co2 injection and ferts may be considered. i want to make sure i get the right lights first.


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## AquaBarren (Nov 6, 2009)

Yes. Very well in fact. Not demanding plants perhaps, but low-med demands will be met. We have vals, crypts, apon, hygro all healthy and growing.

Light I'd mounted 20" above substrate.


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## eco-mod (Oct 19, 2007)

I have one of the 36-48 doubles on my 30" deep 110 and it grows low-medium light plants decently. I did supplement it with 2 39w T5ho giesemann plant bulbs, and it helped out alot. The other thing I will note about the lamp is that it is quite blue, even in the spectrum chart, so for any real demanding plants, supplementing with red heavy bulbs will help greatly. Adding more red helps with my own visual preference as well.


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## FieldsOfGreenSeaTurtles (May 3, 2011)

oh good, two success stories so far. this is promising. 

this might be a stupid question but ill ask it anyway. since one seems to be okay with growing low light plants does that mean that two would possibly afford for medium to high light plants? for instance, when i went out to marineland's website today i found a chart for comparing their LED fixtures and they give PAR ratings. 35PAR at 12" and 19PAR at 24". if i get two fixtures would that give me double the PAR ratings?

here's a link to the chart i mentioned. it's a pdf file FYI, in case that happens to matter with anyone's computer in regards to download speed (56k) or anything else. it's 258.42 KB.
http://www.marineland.com/uploadedFiles/Marineland/11078iMLLEDCharts.pdf


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## eco-mod (Oct 19, 2007)

In regards to your thoughts on if it will grow higher light plants. I can't say for sure as I have not tried it, but with the experience I've had, I'd do the same thing I did again and supplement with t5ho plant or red heavy bulbs. What I have seen in my setup is when I have had only the LED's on for a week or so with my discus either being just moved or settling them down from whatever made them skittish, growth slowed greatly. It became more of a healthy holding pattern rather than anything else. The problem I see with only using the LED fixture is that you are making the plants adjust to using only part of the light spectrum they typically rely on, basically putting more effort into a single type of growth rather than spreading out the work load between the two major light spectrum areas. It's kind of like taking two employees who work well together and get everything done efficiently, firing one of them, and making the remaining one do as much of the work as they can and if they don't get to everything, it'll slide.

Read up on This Sticky in the lighting section. It does a really good job of explaining what I'm getting at.

Also read This One which has more to do with the human visual aspect in terms of comparing pictures and such, but does apply in the sense that the idea of adding a light with more red in the spectrum helps both visually and with growth.


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## Morgan (Jun 28, 2011)

Ive been using Marineland's double bright on a 40 g tank in my classroom. It is extremely bright to the eye and started an algae bloom within 2 days. All plants are thriving under it after I situated one layer of sun cloth under the light to cut out approx 20% of light. With the cloth in place, I've never had such lighting results. I almost want to blame the algae growth on the BLUE LEDs that you CAN'T switch off.
Marineland;s next step is to offer seperate switches for each color band.


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## Kevin Jones (Apr 4, 2004)

I am Using Vertex Illumilux and Illumina fixtures over my planted tanks, they work extremely well. demanding plants grow very well.


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