# No wonder this forum is dead! Bad lighting!



## ray-the-pilot (May 14, 2008)

I cannot believe that there is a sticky with proper watts per gallon up here? 
How about a sticky with the proper PAR! I run my tanks at about 50 -60 PAR at the bottom. 
Also what LEDs are any of you using? 
I purchased a couple of Chinese LEDs for my marine tanks and they are greeeeeaaaat! I mean super-powerful. I have to run them at 40% power. 
Does anyone have experience with stuff like that?


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## Patriot100% (Nov 12, 2011)

Yes this forum is dead or dying. It should be know by now that using the wpg is outdated. 

I just got a finnex planted plus.


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## jrIL (Apr 23, 2005)

Patriot100% said:


> Yes this forum is dead or dying. It should be know by now that using the wpg is outdated.
> 
> I just got a finnex planted plus.


Yes wpg is outdated. And yet many of us used it with success for years on none led lighting.


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## haur (Jan 3, 2015)

Where is the best Aquarium Led Diy Forum?


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

Haha, I enjoy your, Ray the pilot, crazy posts.

It is not that this forum is dead. It is that the internet, plant geniuses, and the Japanese marketing machine turned the hobby into the splendid sight we have today. What is popular today is the equivalent of a big boobed bimbo with Botox lips pouting for a selfie - always the same "aquascapes" with regurgitated Japanese elements and discussion of cool gadgets. 

For the people that still remember what got them in this hobby there is one single retreat - to continue enjoying planted aquariums without the virtual parade of mediocrity. I have the feeling that you, Ray the pilot, will go down that road should you virtually stick around for a bit. 

So here you have it - all the wisdom about hobbies that are dead but alive.


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## ray-the-pilot (May 14, 2008)

*I just got a "Blue whale dork"*



Patriot100% said:


> Yes this forum is dead or dying. It should be know by now that using the wpg is outdated.
> 
> I just got a finnex planted plus.


Here you go! I'm not picking you out in particular patriot but your post is so typical!

Some one starts out with "I have a Blue Whale Dork." OK so what?
You are suppose to help us not impress us.

So give like this:
I have a Blue Whale Dork. It puts out a minimum of 65 PAR at the substrate in my 50 gal tank L48" H16" D16".

That way everybody knows what you have and how you use it!


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## Patriot100% (Nov 12, 2011)

*Re: I just got a "Blue whale dork"*



ray-the-pilot said:


> Here you go! I'm not picking you out in particular patriot but your post is so typical!
> 
> Some one starts out with "I have a Blue Whale Dork." OK so what?
> You are suppose to help us not impress us.
> ...


I just got it two days ago so I don't know the par. I will report my likings when I do get it up and running. I was just answering his question.


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## JustLikeAPill (Oct 9, 2006)

I use an ADA Aquasky 451 (18 x w10 x h12 inch [d45 x š25 x v30 cm]) on my 45-P.

According to the website below, PAR is ~155 µmol at the surface of the substrate (45 cm below light) and 370 at the surface of the water when measured directly under the light. It is supposed to be 7000-8000 K but I think it washes out colors a little bit compared to the ADA metal halides and compact fluorescent I have used in the past.

Source: http://www.prirodni-akvarium.cz/en/technikaSvetloMereni

I absolutely would NOT recommend the aquasky. The acrylic stand gets fractures at the seems if you so much look at it the wrong way. It is so flimsy that I am nervous to even touch it: the slightest pressure could weaken the seams. I think the acrylic pieces the stand is made of are bonded poorly, I guess. It does not come with a dimmer, and I am unaware of one that can be used with it. The cord and on/off button is made of cheap plastic. (think chinese bootleg cellphone charger quality... ) Once the diodes go out after after about 30,000 hours, you have to throw the entire fixture out and buy a whole new light and stand. ADA had to replace the cord once after it burnt out after one year..

The knock off "chihiro " brand looks exactly the same, had a dimmer and remote, is 50% brighter and much cheaper, and offers a twin 452 version (ADA doesn't even have a twin type for the 45-P)

I really wish could dim it. I never had an algae problem until I got this light, it seems. For $250 ($350 to $400 for the new Aquasky Moons), I deserve a basic dimmer.

Cheaply made, overpriced pieces of disposal crap. The quality of ADA has gone way down over the years, I think. Now that Amano has passed I expect everything coming from that company is going to disappoint me.


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

Pft! The quality of Ada has gone down? I guess the original Ada laminated particle board stand that everybody and their brother copied in their garage can be even worst. 

There are two things that Ada sells that are good - the tanks and the canister filters. Everything else flies on hype. Including aquasoil. Amano was nothing more than a salesman. He did that so well that most of us believe that he is an artist. Some of his works are works of art but in the last decade Ada's aquascapes have been dumbed down to make the average user like them, replicate them, and show them to the entire world. How is that for clever marketing and advertisement by the hands of your customers?

A real visionary sets the way and lets the followers expand the original ideas. What Ada has done is to enforce rules that have rendered the hobby both active and very, very stagnant when it comes to creativity. Today we like to think that PAR is the right way to measure light. That is progress compared to 10 years ago. I wish I could say that today's aquascapes have made progress but that is not so. So, wpg or par? That is the level of our discussion... Ah yes, and if 3 or 5 stones are better in my new layout that will also have a passage and miniature fake trees.


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## JustLikeAPill (Oct 9, 2006)

I hate the miniature trees so much...


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## bpb (Mar 23, 2011)

Well put Niko. I recently took a couple years hiatus from the planted tank hobby. Didn't shut down my tank, but basically ceased all maintenance outside of tossing in food every few days. No trimming no water changes. Tank was just holding the floor down basically. No forum reading or product research. I have since renewed my interest and really revamped my tank. What is surprising and disappointing is how slow this once booming forum has become. I drop by every few days but it's like after a week of not stopping by, the same threads and posts are up at the top. To a lesser extent, but still noticeable I see it on the other big forum as well. Shame. I am seeing that people have REALLY run with the "3-4 rocks and a carpet of HC and call it done", or the "pile of rocks with a few branches and a ton of Java fern jungle island" aquascapes and that is what absolutely DOMINATES the hobby. There are some cool mountain scapes here and there in contest photos, but otherwise it seems like the appreciation for variety and dense plant mass has gone by the wayside. My biggest goal in the past was to have a Dutch style aquascape, and I'm making it happen now, but surprised to see that it's completely and totally out of fashion and hardly done at all anymore. Not that I care if my aquascape is popular or not, I do it for myself, but the general direction of the hobby is definitely dumbing down. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

Agreed, "watts per gallon" is obsolete. The best way to correct it is to write a new post on the subject. If it is well researched and well written, it can become a sticky. In DFW-APC forum we've been collecting PAR data for various types of lighting using the club's PAR meter. There is a lot of data, but needs to be organized.

One problem is that no one really agrees on measurable definitions of high, medium, and low light. An observation from our results is that with a PAR of 40 umol at the substrate, you can grow a huge variety of species--even some normally considered high light plants.


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## ray-the-pilot (May 14, 2008)

Michael said:


> One problem is that no one really agrees on measurable definitions of high, medium, and low light. An observation from our results is that with a PAR of 40 umol at the substrate, you can grow a huge variety of species--even some normally considered high light plants.


The RTP scale:
high light >40 umol m-2 sec-1
med light 4 - 40 umol m-2 sec-1
low light < 4 umol m-2 sec-1


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

ray-the-pilot said:


> I cannot believe that there is a sticky with proper watts per gallon up here?
> How about a sticky with the proper PAR! I run my tanks at about 50 -60 PAR at the bottom.
> Also what LEDs are any of you using?
> I purchased a couple of Chinese LEDs for my marine tanks and they are greeeeeaaaat! I mean super-powerful. I have to run them at 40% power.
> Does anyone have experience with stuff like that?


First of all Watts per gallon does not work work with LED's because of the wide variables as far as what is on the market. For an example my first home made fixture using 1 watt LED's which were the best at the time had me pushing almost 10 watts per gallon (270 watts total) on 30 breeder tanks with only fair plant growth. Today using the newest 5 watt LED's I'm pushing 18 watts on these same 30 gallon breeder tanks and had to reduce the cycle time to prevent green water.

With LED's there are several factors that will greatly vary your lighting needs. As I mentioned the efficiency of the LED's which I would only recommend using CREE or Philips as being the most efficient. But you also need to look at the spectrum. The visable light spectrum is from 400nm to over 800nm. But plants only use about 1/4 to 1/3 of that light spectrum. They can make almost no use out of the light in the green and yellow parts of the spectrum. Yet to increase LUMN's most manufacturers concentrate the spectrum in green light. By properly selecting LED's with a strong RED and Blue spectrums it is possible to drastically reduce the total wattage while providing the plants with all the light that require and flourish under.

One big thing with commercial LED fixtures is that so many of them are designed more for reef tanks than for planted tanks. On a reef tank high levels of red light can be deadly to corals and a majority of the photosynthesis is under blue and near UV light. Therefore the reef lighting puts out a lot of blue light. Plants need a balance between blue and red, giving them loads of blue light and a shortage of rad light becomes a waste and you need more power to bring up the red spectrum to a usable level by the plants.


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

RTP? One of the characteristics of a well written post is that all initials and acronyms are fully spelled out the first time they are used. Or are you reffering to yourself?

For most horticultural purposes, PAR (photosynthetically active radiation) is expressed as micromoles (umol) per meter squared per second. Yours seem to be base on square centimeters, which changes the values by several orders of magnitude.


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## ray-the-pilot (May 14, 2008)

Michael said:


> RTP? One of the characteristics of a well written post is that all initials and acronyms are fully spelled out the first time they are used. Or are you reffering to yourself?
> 
> For most horticultural purposes, PAR (photosynthetically active radiation) is expressed as micromoles (umol) per meter squared per second. Yours seem to be base on square centimeters, which changes the values by several orders of magnitude.


Yes, I am RTP. Thought that was obvious!
You got me on that! Edited my post and changed cm to m. Thanks!


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## ray-the-pilot (May 14, 2008)

TropTrea said:


> First of all Watts per gallon does not work work with LED's because of the wide variables as far as what is on the market. ..........
> Therefore the reef lighting puts out a lot of blue light. Plants need a balance between blue and red, giving them loads of blue light and a shortage of rad light becomes a waste and you need more power to bring up the red spectrum to a usable level by the plants.


OK again, I'm not picking on you in particular but this is so typical of stuff at these forums.
Nobody wants (at least I don't want) to hear why you can't use LED's in a planted setting. 
Be positive! Say what you want. For example:
1. Manufactures should put LUX, PAR and PUR data on their fixtures. Maybe even give a spectral curve. 
2. People who rate fixtures should give this info.


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## ObiQuiet (Oct 9, 2009)

ray-the-pilot said:


> OK again, I'm not picking on you in particular but this is so typical of stuff at these forums.
> Nobody wants (at least I don't want) to hear why you can't use LED's in a planted setting.


This forum is actually quite good at that. Search it and you will find.  Obviously, you're not new to this community. 

What you are railing against was just someone trying to give you a helpful reason why you have to be cautious with LED lights. 

Seems like you are baiting us.


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## ray-the-pilot (May 14, 2008)

ObiQuiet said:


> This forum is actually quite good at that. Search it and you will find.  Obviously, you're not new to this community.
> 
> What you are railing against was just someone trying to give you a helpful reason why you have to be cautious with LED lights.


Yes I forgot, follow the mantra of Cerebrum viridiplantum and live in the "dark ages."


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## ObiQuiet (Oct 9, 2009)

ray-the-pilot said:


> Yes I forgot, follow the mantra of Cerebrum viridiplantum and live in the "dark ages."


Cerebrum viridiplantae is a better translation. Genitive plural, you know.


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## BruceF (Aug 5, 2011)

Shouldn’t it be nominative singular?

As for Par pretty much at the last AGA conference it was pointed out measuring par with the equipment we have access to is kind of useless which is not to say that the PAR rating by a manufacturer isn’t important but that it is very general and a starting point at best. For instance if you take the whole spectrum from what is it 400 to 700 the instruments won’t be able to where in that spectrum you are measuring . 
Also it was pointed out that the actual spectrum will often vary by light bulb and etc. So like par spectrum will be a good starting point but not necessarily accurate. Then of course there is coverage and shadow to deal with . 

FWIW *(definitely not IMO!)


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

WPG and PAR and whatever else we invent is not going to ever give the whole picture. This hobby has suffered from a myopic (nearsighted) way of looking at things. Here's an example with light:

Take the cheapest incandescent bulbs you can find at the store. Get the "halogen" ones which are a new thing and inevitably burn in about 2 months. Stick them above a shallow tank - no deeper than 12 inches. Voila (not the same as the Texan "walla") - and you will have lush plant growth. Say 40 watts total over a 30 gallon 12 inch tall tank. There will be no wpg rules, no PAR rules, no LED performing better. Maybe the red in these bulbs is good for plants. I do not know nor I care. It works, every time.

Then trash the dumb incandescent bulbs. Spend $5 for a roll of LEDs. The cheaper the better. Peel of the paper, stick a few strips on something hanging over the tank. Again - it works. No wpg, par, spectrum. Just good ol' Chinese crap.

The moral of these two fables is that everything works IF combined with other factors just right.

Another way of looking at that is this - Does a dog food company care about the health of your dog? No. They care about the profit they make at the end of the quarter. So what on earth do you think an LED online vendor cares about? Your precious $2 plants that you got from someone on a forum. Not selling you a piece of aluminum with 2-1/2 LEDs screwed to it for a price that is not even worth a comment. Anyone (without a soldering iron even) can make an LED fixture with double the PAR of the online aquarium LED vendors. And it will cost less than 1/2 of what they charge. But most people don't want to bother connecting 2-1/2 wires in the privacy of their own home.

Another way of seeing my point follows. Also it may make this post somewhat palatable. Watch this. It is beautiful. Refreshingly beautiful. Guess what wpg and what par and what spectrum these puny simple plants require. My guess is - an incandescent bulb will be fine. A cheap sticker LED strip will be fine. Because they are simple plants (and algae). But just look at the overall impression that this tank leaves you with. No amano wannabe has done that for many many years now. Because the master needs to reinforce his crap every single time and you don't just run berserk with his ideas. The tank below made it to #53 on the Look-Ma-I-Make-Japanese-Tank-Now annual whatever:






I apologize. I made a mistake. The plants in that tank don't even require anything else but ambient light. I have a tank here that has all these plants and the same Clado too. The only plant that did not do well was the tiny Hydrocotyle (the little umbrella plant). But even this plant took a year to completely die off. Anubias, Clado, Moss, Hydrocotyle - these are dumb boring plants that are not keeping up with the progress in our knowledge and have no clue they must have par and LEDs to survive. Any tank that has these plants should get the last place in any contest!


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## BruceF (Aug 5, 2011)

Is that cynical socialism or just plain nihilism? 

Lots of people make good lights and they do care plant growth. It is the business they are in.


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## ObiQuiet (Oct 9, 2009)

BruceF said:


> Shouldn't it be nominative singular?


That would be "a plant brain" -- I'm thinking the best translation is figurative: "the brain of plants". But I'm neither a classicist nor a biologist.


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## ObiQuiet (Oct 9, 2009)

BruceF said:


> Is that cynical socialism or just plain nihilism?


Niko's points are invariably right on, but it can be hard (for me) to invert his sarcasm where he seems to be saying the opposite of what he really means. Read him carefully.

Cheers Niko.

-ObiQuiet


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## ray-the-pilot (May 14, 2008)

BruceF said:


> Shouldn't it be nominative singular?
> 
> As for Par pretty much at the last AGA conference it was pointed out measuring par with the equipment we have access to is kind of useless which is not to say that the PAR rating by a manufacturer isn't important but that it is very general and a starting point at best. For instance if you take the whole spectrum from what is it 400 to 700 the instruments won't be able to where in that spectrum you are measuring .
> Also it was pointed out that the actual spectrum will often vary by light bulb and etc. So like par spectrum will be a good starting point but not necessarily accurate. Then of course there is coverage and shadow to deal with .
> ...


No plantum is an adjective derived from a noun and has to agree with the noun in number gender and case.

Well if the manufacture gives output in LUX, PAR, PUR and any other spectrum, All you have to do is put your ordinary LUX meter in your tank get a reading and you can convert to any spectrum you want, In situ.


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## ray-the-pilot (May 14, 2008)

niko said:


> Then trash the dumb incandescent bulbs. Spend $5 for a roll of LEDs. The cheaper the better. Peel of the paper, stick a few strips on something hanging over the tank. Again - it works. No wpg, par, spectrum. Just good ol' Chinese crap.
> 
> The moral of these two fables is that everything works IF combined with other factors just right.


I guess your right. My wife plants tulip and narcissus bulbs pointy side down and they always grow.


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## BruceF (Aug 5, 2011)

Yes well part of the point of the talk was that you should be demanding the manufacturer give you spectrum and par information up front. 

The other thing of course is cost. Leds are cheaper in the long run in terms of electric bills. Replacing 2 T5 bulbs once a year gets costly over the long term. Not to mention the fact that replacing t5 bulbs just might not be possible in the long run. These are important factors when purchasing a light

My Latin isn't all that great I just assumed you were latinizing an alias and that it was therefore a proper noun.


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

. . .begin rant. . .

Voltaire: "Perfect is the enemy of good." 

Our PAR meters and PAR measurements are not perfect. But the equipment is reasonably available to hobbyists, and the information is so much better than any other method we have used to quantify useful light for aquarium plants!

This is especially true if one is measuring PAR in one's own tank. You can move the sensor to all different positions, and see the surprising effects of reflectors, shading by plants and decor, ambient light, and reflection from the interior of the glass sides. PAR meters are the best tool commonly available to us for these purposes. They are not perfect, but they are very good.

Yes, I know that DIY LED fixtures can be closer to perfect than what I can buy ready made. But no, I don't want to build one myself, just as I do not want to do a valve job on my own car. Yes, I have done valve jobs on cars after much study, frustration, wasted effort, grease on my clothes, and crawling around on very cold or very hot hard concrete. (Better concrete than gravel, which I have also crawled on while repairing cars.) Like most car owners, I prefer to pay someone else to do a valve job on my car, just as most planted aquarium hobbyists prefer to pay someone else to build a tidy, convenient, ready-to-use LED fixture.

. . .end rant. . .


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## f1ea (Jul 7, 2009)

So... how much PAR at the substrate would be a dual T5HO on a ADA 60p (35 cm tall) with the fixture ~7cm above the rim? (lights to top of substrate ~37cm). 
I know it's somewhere between medium and high light; but not sure on the PAR...

Also... agree with Niko. Aquascape contests have turned tanks to look the same. Every once in a while an aquascape shows up which provides fresh breath.... but if it wins, the next yr everyone does something similar. Also, Amano kind of forced all these "aquascape rules" which really limit how tanks should look like.... 

I dont even bother looking at Iwagumis anymore. They all look the same. They all are the same.

Forest tanks and fake trees.... dime a dozen.

Amano's early work felt a LOT more free than his later stuff......... Not sure why he changed his approach so much; maybe to produce hundreds of tanks quickly? maybe to be able to reproduce results easily? to sell more product? ah well.


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

Even with using PAR reading there is no simple formula to make everyone happy. Spectrum is the big variable and I can create a tank for high light plants with a PAR of 20 at the substrate compared to a low light tank for the plants and a PAR of 40. The difference is the spectrum with 90% of the light concentrated where the plants can utilize it in the first place and concentrating it for the human eye only in the second place.

Converting PAR or efficiency to Watts is even worst with LED's as some out there only givve 60 lumns per watt while others are approaching 200 lumns per watt. You get what you pay for here so I stick with name brands.

Yes PAR is better than Lumns but it is far from the ideal way to look at the planted tanks light. Perhaps a formula where you subtract Lumns (strongest in green light) from the PAR (evenly distributed) would be a better indicator.


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## abrooks12376 (Jul 22, 2014)

Oh man.. just passed through here.. haha.. had to check the date on these posts?? 2015?!?! Guys\girls.. you really need to get out more.. seriously?!?! Aquasky?!?!? Planted plus will produce, current sat plus pro and eco exotic will wow, bml will blow the doors off.. I'm sure bulbs do lots of stuff but they're... just well.. tad bit dated. Par is cool and all but actually putting these things to work and seeing what theure.capable of?? Fun stuff!!


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