# question for lighting a biocube for freshwater



## Gilraen Took (Apr 19, 2007)

When I first moved back to FL, I got myself a biocube 29, with the rapid LED kit. After a fight with my aunt(who I live with) I was told I couldn't keep it any more, but never had any luck selling the tank. We've got nasty water where I live, and I've had a 10 gallon going for a while to, for lack of a better term, cycle the water before I do changes on my tanks so I don't have to buy it(2.0 PPM ammonia from the tap. . ), and I have been hoping to get some plants growing for my goldfish to snack on in there as well, but since I've got my planted tank and a goldfish tank, that isn't keeping up quite as well as I'd like it to. Tomorrow I'm planning to spend the morning dismantling the 10 and hooking the biocube back up to start being able to do some bigger water changes. I'm just wondering what I should use for the lights for it.

Right now, I've got 6 assorted white LEDs on a 700 mA driver(and a couple of greens. Didn't feel like taking them off) but I've also got a 1050 mA driver that I could pop on there if I took the greens off. I'm definitely planning to keep water sprite(submersed) anacharis, riccia, and duckweed(all of which I have some of already), and am hoping to keep some cabomba as well, since they tend to devour that whenever I grab some for them. I'm sort of assuming the 6 LEDs won't be enough to really get any sort of growth out of it, but anyone have any suggestions on how many extras I should add to it? Or which temperature of white(or red) I should go for with any new LEDs I order? To be honest, I don't remember what kind I have at the moment on it.

Thank you for any ideas you might have


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

Do not underestimate the power of quality LED's like it appears you have. I have gotten some fantastic plant growth on tanks using only 1/2 watt per gallon with a 50/50 split between XP-G2 neutral Whites and Cool Whites. If your using the older XP-E LED's you will need slightly more light but still 2/3 watt per gallon should be enough for you. When you start reaching the 1 watt per gallon range your getting close to the high lighted tanks that work great with some of the bright colored extreme light demanding plants.


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## Gilraen Took (Apr 19, 2007)

Nifty, thank you  I'll see how this goes for a while then, and add a couple more if it really looks like things are struggling, then.


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

Not a 100% correlation but I just converted a 40 breeder tank from my prior lighting of 78 Watts of HO T-5's to 5 LED's running at 3 Watts each. 3 are cool whites and 2 are neutral whites. In three days the already established tank has turned to green water soup. Note the only change I made was lighting/ The last two days I started doing 50% water changes to get the green out but in 24 hours between changes it seems like a diminishing return. I will next try reducing the light by switching to a 700ma driver will give me 3 Watts per LED. 

On several rows of tanks I have I ran into the same issue only I was running 9 watts on 15 gallon tanks and found the LED's worked better when I only ran between 4 and 6 watts per tank.


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