Light Question from a Newbie

[jessev74]

Kinda new to raising plants. I have a 10gal with a few guppies, dwarf cray, mys snail, and some shrimp.

Plants are Anacharis, Bacopa, a small Banana plant, some java moss, and floating Amazon Frogbit.

My question is - is the standard LED that came with my kit good enough for these plants? It's white, not yellow, and it is very bright. The hood that came with the kit is pretty flimsy, so I will probably eventually upgrade anyway. When I do, what light should I be looking for? Thanks for the help!!

 

[jessev74]

Anyone?


Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium Advice

 

[Ziggy953]

I'm not familiar with the light that comes with a 10g kit.

You can look into Finnex LED lights for your upgrade. They are pretty nice.

 

[2xEcho]

When you say "it looks bright", it's all relative. If you have nothing to compare it to, the led light that comes with the kit does look bright. I bought a cheap 10 gal kit that has two led lights in the hood. I'm only putting low or medium low light plants there for now because anything else won't do well. I have no experience with the finnex lights, but anything that says "full spectrum lighting" and/or specifies "for freshwater planted aquariums" will be better than the led lights that came with the tank. My banana plant does well in my tank that is higher light, as does my bacopia. The bacopia didn't grow well before the lighting upgrade... It had very small leaves, was stunted and was very slow growing. After the upgrade it now grows larger leaves, grows much more quickly and is thriving.

Take the info for whatever it's worth, just sharing my experience in hopes that it helps allow you to make an informed decision.

Good luck and welcome to the hobby!

 

[jessev74]

Thanks guys. Going to petco today hopefully they have something . My bacopia is starting to look like you said - small leaves, etc. So hopefully the new light will turn it around.