LED Lighting Compared to T-5 lights

I think LED lighting is great for many reason and bad for one - you need real deep pockets. Some come with adjustable color temp so you can set them to your tank e.g. coral or planted.

I was looking into the marineland leds a while back but never got around to setting up a planted tank so stopped looking... the reviews are mixed for fish only tanks but here's what I got off another forum concerning plants

Quote:
Originally Posted by reeffreak
Would love to see pics of this lit up when you get it and set it up. Wonder how good it would be for plant growth?


Pitiful.

I wouldn't even try to grow pest algae under them lol....

yeah, but without an explantion as to why they are pitifull his comment is worthless. He could have bought 20k or 14k LEDS or a fixture that was too small.

The problem with LED lights for plants, is that LED lighting emits an incorrect color spectrum for plants. LED lighting is used alot for reefs and deep marine tanks. But aquatic plants grown in freshwater do not utilize the heavy blue light spectrum found in LEDs.

Now, maybe somewhere there is one that plants will like, but I don't know of it. The full spectrum (aka "daylight") T5s are very good for plants; I use those and compact fluorescents which are pretty intense lighting for freshwater. But I need the heavy duty lights b/c I keep a lot of red plants (high tech set up....CO2, nutrient dosings, blah blah blah)

In most cases they are more useful in feefs. The higher end LED fixtures are adjustable from 5k-20k but the last time I looked they cost 2k for a 6ft tank, so I stopped looking.

LED lighting is starting to come down in price. There are some out there that work fine for plants. You might want to keep your regular lights to turn on when you are viewing the tank.

Spine said:

LED lighting is starting to come down in price. There are some out there that work fine for plants. You might want to keep your regular lights to turn on when you are viewing the tank.

Click to expand...

Can you shed any details on ones that work fine for plants? I like to stay up on such things and haven't seen them. Ones that are more suited for reef tanks but that can be adjusted to aquatic plants would most likely be way, way overkill money wise. Lot of buck for little bang plant-wise. So if you know of systems that would be well suited for planted tanks and are in a decent price range, I'm all ears!

I'll be attending the AGA (Aquatic Gardeners Association) convention in November, so whatever is new on the market by then, I'll certainly let folks know.

My boss just got some that where cheap. I'm not sure of the source but will try and find out. These do grow plants just fine but you need your regular lights to view them. Give me a couple days I'll try and get some specifics.

Okay, thanks so much!

I guess I have to see what they are / and how they work for the plants. I'm sure it's me, but I am confused of why someone would need to have other lights in addition to these, if these work fine. Seems like extra $ to me.

...course, I am blonde, so that might also explain my confusion

There are plenty of LED lights that will grow plants just fine and are pretty cheap. The ones that cost the big bucks do two things at once
1. Grow plants
2. Emit light that's equal to daylight and bright enough for the human eye to see things normally.

You can buy LED's that will grow your plant just fine(the ones at work emit blue or green light) but they won't have that white light that we are use to seeing, thus your tank would be dark,needing the regular light turned on for viewing.
Since the LED's use so little energy if you ran them for 8 hours a day and just turned on the regular ones for viewing you would still be saving on your electric bill in the long run.