How much Lighting do I need

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Tuama

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Jul 13, 2018
Messages
2
Location
New Zealand
Have just recently started to plant out my large 800litre tank which is about 70cm deep and the lights i have are LED and dont seem to be strong enough to grow the plants. What strength of lights in the light spectrum or lights do you think i need to light the tank for plants?

Thanks
 
I'll have to have the following questions answered to try and help. Fair warning there is likely no "cheap" way to light a 2' + deep tank.

How much light do you want?
What kind of tank are you trying to run? (CO2, Ferts etc etc).
What plants are you determined to grow?

I would generally say:
Radions...
SBreef
2 x fluval 3.0
Twinstars

But.... $$$$

2 x beamswork DA-FSPEC should be okay for low - medium light. but... no color adjustments.
 
Been US’d - had to convert centimetres to feet lol. Some thoughts from using a deep tank here.

On mine which is 2 and a half feet deep, with CO2 injection at either end of tank - I run a quad t5ho and a dimmable medium priced LED light (white light bank 100% and blue light bank 0% but have had it at 50%).

I’m sticking with the t5ho as can get bulbs higher in red light compared to leds here. If I could get decent dimmable plant leds that weren’t so hideously expensive, would swap to leds completely as bulb cost is a bit.

I’ve run reef lights and not achieved even algae until swapping to CO2 injection so as above - depends on CO2 used or not imo.
 
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I bought and am using a couple of Mars Aqua "black box" LED lights. They have a full spectrum channel and a UV/Blue channel separately controlled. They are growing carpet plants super well in my 25" tall tank. They were cheap, too: $100USD each on Amazon. My tank is 18x36 inches at the base, and I'm using two of them. They come with hardware to suspend them from the ceiling or a canopy. You can check out my 65g Rebuild thread to see the progress I've made with them.
 
My main goal is to plant out my tank, so lighting is for the plants in terms of growth.
Dosing regularly with flourish and have root tabs under most of the plants. I have contemplated whether or not to have co2 but budget is more focused on lighting.
I have a bit to research and see if we can get them here down under ( New Zealand )
Thanks heaps
 
I’m in Australia - good luck!

Imo don’t discount CO2 injection - it’s incredible bang for the buck on effectiveness (expensive to set up but cheap to refill bottles). I’d go for both lighting and CO2 (even if lighting not great as gone a bit cheap), rather than go just expensive lighting.

All the PAR will be only as good as the CO2 in the fish tank which is something like a few ppm versus 30ppm injected. Some thoughts.
 
Have just recently started to plant out my large 800litre tank which is about 70cm deep and the lights i have are LED and dont seem to be strong enough to grow the plants. What strength of lights in the light spectrum or lights do you think i need to light the tank for plants?

Thanks
That's about how deep my 60 gallon 230 litre tank is. I'll have to follow this thread and take some notes.
 
Here's a pic of tank and lights. The growth is pretty tall on the carpet (Micranthemum 'Monte Carlo'), but still super dense. I trimmed it to half that height about 10 days ago, so growth is robust to say the least.
 

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