# Planning to buy both of these LED lights-good choice or not.



## Reneejm (Mar 14, 2013)

Hi all, I'm Renee and completely new to planted aquariums. In the past I've had saltwater reef tanks with great success but sold everything when I moved. In an effort to save money, *I thought I'd try a planted aquarium. I'm quickly learning that I'm not going to be saving much lol. *But now I'm excited to try something new so too late! *LED lighting is new to me and I'm having a bit of a hard time truly understanding what to look for when buying lights. I'm looking for medium to medium low lighting. I have a 29g aquarium that came with the LED marineland hood (even if I wasn't planning to put plants in I don't like the look the lights give). I do plan on using CO2. So here's what I've come up with. Any advice or comments will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance *

AquaRay grobeam 600 ultima single strip*
http://aquarayusa.com/grobeam.html

And*

The Finnex Fugeray 30"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B008K23JE4

Too much? Not enough? Bad combo?*


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## Yo-han (Oct 15, 2010)

I can't commenton the finnex but do have experience with the aquarays. Depending on your goals (low/high light), IMO you'll need 2-6 of these over a 30G.


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## Reneejm (Mar 14, 2013)

I'm going for medium light. Sounds like I should get at least 1 more then as well as the finnex. For best plant light and overall look of the tank should I mix the colors? What do you suggest and is there a better brand that you recommend? Thanks for your response Johan.


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## Quetzalcoatl (Feb 13, 2009)

You need to cover the spectrum which plants can use for photosynthesis. LED has very narrow spectrum compared to FL. I think there is a thread that talks about this in detail. 
In my experience, using 6500K and 8000K LED covers green spectrum really well, and ideally you would want to add blue around 450nm and red around 650nm for even better plant growth.


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## Reneejm (Mar 14, 2013)

Quetzalcoatl, thanks for your response. I really have been doing a ton of reading but there's so much out there I'm totally confused! I tried going to my local aquarium store that specializes in planted tanks but the person there said the LED that came with my tank was fine light (marineland hood with LED light) I find it hard to believe so I'm still struggling to figure out what's best. I'll look more into FL, I understand them a little better anyway I just thought that LED was considered better. Thanks again, starting my search for the right lights over :-/


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## Dr_Hoatzin (Aug 29, 2011)

I assume this is a standard-sized 29g tank and thus 30" long. In which case, why not run a single BuildMyLED strip as they now make a 30" model? Add a pair of their tiltable legs and you can angle the light back to cover your taller background plants as well as foreground and provide at least medium light to everything.


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## Dr_Hoatzin (Aug 29, 2011)

Also, according to Finnex the 30" FugeRay would put your substrate at about 30-35 PAR directly below the light and dropping from there (assuming you have about 2" substrate depth)...this is the extreme low end of medium light.


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## Reneejm (Mar 14, 2013)

Thank you Dr_Hoatzin! I just saw the build my led website before you commented and was thinking of ordering it. Their website wants you to select a beam angle, 30, 45, 60 and so on. How do I know what beam angle I want? So I got confused and book marked the site until I could try to figure it out. I did find the Par of Finnex through a really good link on this site and ruled it out. My tank is a standard 29g, I have about 3" of substrate.


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## Aplomado (Mar 20, 2013)

I've got 2 of the buildmyled.com units for planted tanks, and they seem good so far; you might want to check them out.


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## Drowning (Sep 10, 2014)

Reneejm said:


> Quetzalcoatl, thanks for your response. I really have been doing a ton of reading but there's so much out there I'm totally confused! I tried going to my local aquarium store that specializes in planted tanks but the person there said the LED that came with my tank was fine light (marineland hood with LED light) I find it hard to believe so I'm still struggling to figure out what's best. I'll look more into FL, I understand them a little better anyway I just thought that LED was considered better. Thanks again, starting my search for the right lights over :-/


The LFS guy is a moron. Marineland lights are junk compared to any Finnex model. For medium lit 30" 30 gallon smaller tank a 30" Planted+ provides much better light then their old Fugeray model you are considering. Spend the extra money and skip the old FugeRay for their batter models. Your tank is shallow enough to not need a Ray 2. 50 gallons and 30" and you might need a Ray 2.


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## serenityfate1 (Sep 4, 2014)

Check out beamswork fixtures. Had them for a good year + and still going good.


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## pandragon (Jul 10, 2014)

I vouch for the planted+ 30. I have one on a 29 gallon 18 inch high tank. I keep it in the middle of the rim and it works well for hygros, wisteria, bacopa, anubias, java fern, egeria. and swords. I have to limit the photoperiod to 8-10 hours or the growth slows and ph rises (no additional co2 in my tank) which lends me to think it provides decent amount of light. Also, I get the highest growth under the 2 sections that have the actinic blue lights (I keep both switches on for the entire photoperiod without a dimmer or anything as of yet.) I found mine for cheap on amazon.com, around $90 If I remember right. Hope this helps!


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

Looking at the two fixtures you initially linked to I was not completely happy with the expected spectrum. My fear is if add enough of these fixtures to get enough light on the red end of the spectrum you will be over powering the blue end of the spectrum. Plants do need both blue and red light to grow however these fixtures are using daylight LED's that are very strong in the blue part of the spectrum and weak on the red end. 

I'f your handy at all you build your own fixture using a combination of the Cree Cool Whites (or daylight) with Neutral Whites to balance out the red end of the spectrum and still save a considerable amount of cash.


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