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You could always add some smaller floaters to diffuse the light. Phyllanthus fluitans would be my choice, looks great in small tanks and goes bright red with enough light on it.

As far as I know they're just the same as the standard aquabars but with some of the white LEDs swapped out for blue and red ones. As for spectrum I have no idea, but they look nice enough when running.

I'd probably take the TMC Aquabars over these if you need something long and flat to hide away.

We have these over the plant sales tank in work... they're OK I guess but not adjustable, a bit out-dated and I much prefer the look you get from dense matrix LEDs like Kessils. You'd probably want a couple of the Aqua Lifes to replace your T5s, and for that money I'd much rather buy a pair of...

Heh yeah the a150 was enough to happily power the old low tech Bucket (90x90cm). I'd estimate it was equivalent to about 100w metal halide.

I've got the 150. Great light, noisy fan. I think they improved on that with the 160 (plus they provide more control) but haven't had my mitts on one.

Neither WPG or lumens are terribly useful, and the former is completely useless with LEDs as they output far more light per watt than conventional halogen or fluorescent lighting for which the 'rule of thumb' was developed. PAR is what you want but you're unlikely to find data for most lights...

Trigonometry!

Ideally I'd like it about 120cm above the substrate, for which I need a roughly 60 degree beam angle (edge to edge). The WE variants are more than double that, but the N would be pretty much spot on.

I really wish they'd release an a360n Tuna Sun (narrow beam version for mounting high above tank). I'd buy one right away.

I think that's probably correct, but I'm also just making an assumption based on what manufacturers seem to supply. I'm quite tempted by these (need something with a 60-70 degree beam). http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/201133335953?_trksid=p2060778.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT Anyone have an...

Any idea of the beam angle on these?

I've got anubias, crypts, java fern, mosses, lilleaopsis, hairgrass and various other bits and pieces growing (very slowly!) in tanks with no lighting at all except for ambient room light. The classic low tech stuff really doesn't seem to need much. Sent from my LT30p using Tapatalk

Looks ace Al. If anyone is interested in the old a150w and isn't fussed about it being a bit noisy, I see Charterhouse are currently selling them for a reasonable £109 - http://www.charterhouse-aquatics.co.uk/kessil-a150w-led-aquarium-light-amazon-sun-american-edition-p-15644.html

I have to admit that although this site runs tremendously well generally, the search function can be a bit hit and miss.

Hi John, I don't think anyone in this thread has intended to attack or ridicule you. Advice/discussion on here can be somewhat on the 'robust' side, but very rarely is it personal. Oh, and Edvet is Dutch, they can find humour difficult sometimes ;) (I know, my better half is Dutch).

Seems to be another fallacy (see data above). To balance that I have seen some longer term graphs which shows a large drop off in fluorescent tubes after 20-30,000 hours, but that's 4-5 years of 12 hours a day so not really something to worry about. Source for the above -...

Yeah was a 70w mh originally, then a Kessil a150 (36w). Both suspended approx 18 inches above the water.

The mental image is brilliant.

I've just got a bog standard electrical timer from B&Q, seems to do the job.

I only use luminaires really so don't have a specific product to suggest, but don't forget to factor in electricity costs over the lifetime of a product. I justified buying a (second hand) Kessil LED fixture on the basis that it would pay for itself in saved electric within 2 years compared to...

Sounds about right. You could probably go a longer photoperiod if needed (mine gets about 12 hours).

As you mentioned, PAR is what matters. If you have a PAR meter then you can measure it, anything else will just be complete guesswork. What size is the tank? For reference and the vaguest of comparisons, I have a 36w Kessil a150 2 feet above the substrate on my 3'x3' tank and that seems to be...

If someone reminds me in the new year I might do a day of pH measuring on the big tank. It'd be interesting to see what it looks like. I can't measure dKH but it should still show if photosynthesis is outstripping co2 supply from surface diffusion, right? Could run it with and without flow as...

Yup, it was way too loud for me. I ended up rewiring the fan to run at half speed on a separate 12v power supply (old mobile phone charger) instead of at 24v. Much quieter, but the unit runs a lot hotter, so it'll be reducing the life of the LEDs, although I have no idea how much by. I got it...

Well the good news is that the dimmer works quite well. The bad news is that it causes an almighty buzzing noise from the pendant on anything except full brightness (it's still faintly audible at 100%), I think either from the bulbs themselves or the capacitors. So pretty useless all in all. I...

Ordered one, will report back when it arrives.

I might get one to try actually - my fan is already modded to run at half speed on a separate power supply and the light tends to run pretty hot, so I wonder if dimming the light will produce less heat. Maybe not, just saw the price on the dimmer - £105 on Amazon. Edit - £5 on eBay, that's...

Sort of -http:// Dimming kessil A150 - UltimateReef.com

No, the 150 doesn't have a dimmer function.

The accepted wisdom over on some of the US forums seems to be that water has a pretty negligible effect on PAR compared to air, and that in some cases it may even increase PAR (diffraction? Lensing? Not sure why). I haven't seen whatever data they're basing that off though.

I tried them and absolutely hated the colour rendition, went back to my 70w halide shop spotlight (also cheap ~£20 second hand on ebay).

Hi hillthx. If you could avoid writing all in capital letters that would be good, it makes it very hard to read. As for the light units, I suspect either option will be fine. Links to the respective units might help people give more specific advice. If the the 3x8w unit allows you to switch...

I suspect these are not all created equal. There are lots that look pretty identical on the outside, but I tried a generic looking 40w one from ebay and it was woeful - really dim (although I didn't have a PAR meter for proper measurements), harsh light and horrible colour rendition. If you're...

Hehe, got to be careful what you wish for sometimes Troi :lol: Good thread though!

I spend pretty much zero time worrying about this sort of thing (I neglect my plants and they still grow faster than I would like), but the paper isn't terribly conclusive. Some of the spectral results sound interesting but it only looks at one plant species for 2 weeks, with very small Ns and...

I'm pretty sure there's a thesis by Clive on the matter in one of the other threads if you have a good look.

I think with the monitor thing, if you're doing colour critical stuff and the light temperature is changing throughout the day then it might be worth investing in one of the monitor calibration tools with an ambient light sensor. Or you could borrow one and just have a couple of different...

Try them and see which you like the look of best?

Hi John, Sounds interesting, what are you setting up? You could use any low power LED spotlights really, if you're not fussed about the moonlights being blue (this never looks very natural to me).

Good points. Wish someone with too much time and money on their hands would quantify this sort of thing :p

I have no idea, I've never tried. But the evidence is that T8s only degrade 5-10% over their lifetime, and I doubt that makes much difference one way or the other. If you've got evidence that they degrade more than that it'd be good to see, I'm just relying on a bit of googling.

Confusing the point a little I think Troi - you'd stand pretty much the same chance using 5 year old T8s as you would brand new ones.

Found this graph after a bit of a google - you can see that T8s never lose more than about 10% of their output, and that's after about 3 years of use (assuming 3500 hours a year if used for 10 hours/day in an aquarium). So I really wouldn't worry about changing them. T5 and T5HO lose even less...

I think I remember seeing a graph somewhere that showed that they do degrade, but only by a few percent. I could have dreamt that however! I'm sure someone will be bale to provide a better answer.

Don't even get me started. Damn thing went from Australia to the Uk and back again twice. Given up now.

I think it might be time to invest in a PAR meter and take some test readings :) PS, if it were me upsizing I'd definitely be increasing the tank height to 40 or 45 cm, gives a few more scaping options I reckon.

I tried one of these on my big tank (think it was the 40w version) out of curiosity, don't have a par meter but seemed very dim for the wattage and gave a really horrible colour rendition with harsh shadows. They'd probably grow plants OK in a nano but I'd avoid them for aesthetic reasons.

Hi all, I know this is going to be tricky without any PAR info, but I was hoping between us we might come up with a good guess. I'm looking at changing the lighting on my Bucket (90x90cm, 30cm tall) to a custom LED setup. Currently, it's running off a single 70W MH suspended 60cm above the...

What sort of height do you reckon it'd need to be at to cover 90x90cm, Luis? And d'ya reckon it'd be any use for a low light setup at that distance.

On the plus side, I got a replacement 70w MH for a mere £20, so can't complain really.

Yeah, figured it was worth a punt for the cost of the return postage.

Well curiosity got the better of me... ordered the 30W 'White light' version, supposedly about 100W MH equivalent (based on, who knows?). Anyway, it's useless. I don't have a PAR meter but it's obviously only about half the power of my 70W MH, if that. The light beam is also really broad, and...

Hmm, anyone care to hazard a guess as to what wattage SMD LED Floodlight would be roughly equivalent to a 70w MH suspended 2' over a 1' deep tank?! Something like this... http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LED-Floodligh ... 178wt_1163

Would love to know how effective those LED floodlights are (and what the spread is like on them). My 70w MH shop spotlight has just died and gave a pretty close spread to what I needed (3'x3' tank approx 2' below light), but wouldn't mind something cheaper to run. EDIT - In answer to my own...

I got a JJC 70w MH shop spotlight on ebay for something like £23 a year ago. Works fine but pretty ugly, haven't got around to DIYing a surround yet.

This is a good link for getting a rough idea of what different colour temperature combos will look like - http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/lighting.htm

Hard to say to be honest. My tank is all very low tech, so no dosing or anything. You might find with co2 and ferts that it's enough light. The glosso seemed to vary 50/50 between growing upwards and sideways, so probably on the edge of the light limit for carpeting. This was only 70W over 9...

Me? Mainly low-medium light plants. Tried glosso but it slowly died away.

I'm not sure how much coverage varies with design of reflectors, etc, but the light fall from my single 70w MH shop spotlight spills over the edges of my 3' x 3' square tank from a height of 2' above the wtaer. I shall leave any further maths to you :p

Hehe, that's pretty much exactly what I had in mind, just wasn't sure if it was a stupid idea.

Hi all, I'm finally starting to get my new project set up (90lx30hx90d, open-top), and ended up changing where I had it set up, so that it's now directly underneath the main ceiling light for the room. Now this light rarely gets used as I have lamps and stuff, and I was wondering if it might...