Finnex Question - Low wattage?

[Sillyfishies]

I was wondering why everyone says you need 1w+ LED's for decent light penetration, yet the Finnex features (which are loved) are just a bunch of super low watt LEDs? Why can't a marineland fixture support plants, yet it's very similar wattage to a fugeray? Probably seems like a dumb question.

 

[Aquatic_Adam]

I was wondering why everyone says you need 1w+ LED's for decent light penetration, yet the Finnex features (which are loved) are just a bunch of super low watt LEDs? Why can't a marineland fixture support plants, yet it's very similar wattage to a fugeray? Probably seems like a dumb question.

Hello!

There are a few other things that goes into lighting outside of just depth penetration when it comes to plants. I will lightly touch on a few things:

The light fixture degree optics: This is basically a fancy way of saying how the LEDs are focused. There are usually 3 standard optics - 120 (no optics), 90, and 60. 60 focuses the LED light the most which means the best depth penetration but little light diffusion (covers less area). 120 is the opposite. I am guessing that cheaper LED fixtures light MarineLand are probably no optics.

The other important thing that a cheaper LED may not really use would be PUR which is Photosynthetically Usable Radiation. Which is related to PAR. But PUR is the light that can actually be used by the plant. You can have the brightest lights in the world, but if their spectrum is no usable by the plants, it won't grow very well. In easy terms, imagine having a giant meal, but of only 1 food like chicken. Sure, it is a lot of something, but it won't be good for you as you're missing out on a lot of other usable nutrients.

There may be a couple other things but I would presume that those 2 things would be the biggest reason why an LED light MarineLand doesn't keep plants alive, versus an LED fixture like Finnex.

Hope that helps!

 

[dcutl002]

Good stuff Aquatic_Adam! If I may add: look at the customer reviews of Marineland and Finnex. I usually look at Amazon. The Marineland fixtures seem to run hot and there are also a lot of complaints pertaining to longevity. Although no light fixture is perfect, I think you will come to the conclusion that Finnex fixtures are better than Marineland after doing some research on quality, optics, and plant response.