Led light advice BIG hooded tank with high tech scape

[AterMentis]

Hi all, i am getting back into the planted tank scene and am getting a 245x50x50cm aquarium with a hood on top. (And no my situation does not allow me to leave the hood off unfortunatly). Going high tech like i was used to with high light and co2 injection and heavy plant load. I have been looking for days now for a good led light (as i only had experience with t5 back in the day) to fit on the aquarium providing me around 40lm/litre but am completely lost/stuck as most fixtures are not waterproof enough for use in an aquarium hood.. chihiros wrgb2…twinstar s series… all fit the budget but seem to be made for open top exclusively... Fluval plant 3.0 seems to be not powerful enough for what i want... anybody have any suggestions or first hand experience with high end led lights that would fit and survive life in an aquarium hood? I did find a german company ledaquaristik.de who have the AquaLumix and pro 2 lineup that seem very high power, but i can't really find a lot of info on people having used it in a serious aquascape? Thanks alot for anyone out there taking the time to give advice or point towards a light to look at as this has been stressing me out for days now!

 

[KirstyF]

It depends on your goals of course and how much you feel you need high ‘high light’.

I run across the very same issue, lengthy searches, going round in circles (drove me nuts too) and ended up with the plant 3.0’s as I simply couldn’t find anything else that was reliably waterproof (as well as dimmable, controllable etc) You’d think there would be more of a choice wouldn’t you!!

I’m now running those plant 3.0’s at max 50% (new start up, will likely increase over time) but I can’t imagine there would be too much that couldn’t be grown at their max…..but like I say….depends on your goals!

The advice on this forum is second to none and the folks here are fab but you might find that in regard to this particular query, it’s a tiny bit thin on the ground.

I can at least confirm that so far the plant 3.0’s will take a real good splashing and condensation drips without a pause, so they do what it says on the tin. 😊

 

[arcturus]

Hi all, i am getting back into the planted tank scene and am getting a 245x50x50cm aquarium with a hood on top. (And no my situation does not allow me to leave the hood off unfortunatly). Going high tech like i was used to with high light and co2 injection and heavy plant load. I have been looking for days now for a good led light (as i only had experience with t5 back in the day) to fit on the aquarium providing me around 40lm/litre but am completely lost/stuck as most fixtures are not waterproof enough for use in an aquarium hood.. chihiros wrgb2…twinstar s series… all fit the budget but seem to be made for open top exclusively... Fluval plant 3.0 seems to be not powerful enough for what i want... anybody have any suggestions or first hand experience with high end led lights that would fit and survive life in an aquarium hood? I did find a german company ledaquaristik.de who have the AquaLumix and pro 2 lineup that seem very high power, but i can't really find a lot of info on people having used it in a serious aquascape? Thanks alot for anyone out there taking the time to give advice or point towards a light to look at as this has been stressing me out for days now!

The ledaquaristik lights are excellent and used in several setups, at least in Germany. You do not see many people using them because social media is flooded with aquascapers sponsored by the usual big brands. Anyway, you have a large ~600 litre tank and can combine the AquaLumix and Pro 2 lights. You would have ~30.000 lm with two AquaLumix 115cm bars (~50 lm/liter). If you add two more Pro 2 bars you would end up 60-70 lm/liter. An alternative are daytime.de matrix lights. Again, these are fully customizable and some matrix modules pack 180 lm/W. You can easily pack 40.000-50.000 lm with two matrix lights covering your tank. The ledaquaristik and the daytime lights can be used on a tank with lid without issues. Btw, I had a Aqualumix 115 cm (with Sunriser 8 controller) on my previous 120P tank, delivering ~58 lm/liter...

My question is if you have checked the prices of the daytime or ledaquaristik. These are at least at the same price range as ADA lights, i.e. 2-3x the price of the most expensive Chihiros, Twinstar, or ONF lights...

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Welcome to UKAPS

.......but am completely lost/stuck as most fixtures are not waterproof enough for use in an aquarium hood.............Thanks alot for anyone out there taking the time to give advice or point towards a light to look at as this has been stressing me out for days now!

I'd look at IP65 rated LED "Flood lights" or "Low bay lights". If you get "day light" (6500K) they should be fine for plant growth and some are also dimmable.

@Filip Krupa used flood lights on <"his monster tank">.

cheers Darrel

 

[oreo57]

Describe your hood.
Clearance to water, sealed, ports?

 

[AterMentis]

Hood is about 10cm height with a clearnace of 8cm between the support strips inside the aquarium and the top covering plates.

I have been looking at the Daytime Onex system as a cheaper alternative to the Daytime Matrix and Aqualumix systems. Anybody have any experience with those? I understand these are quite new in the lineup…. 4x120cm strip of the onex system with 2 plant and 2 color would result in about 25000 lumen total or about 41 lm/litre. So i am hoping this would be good enough for coloration of higher demand plants but not too powerfull that its hard to balance it out with co2 and nutrients…

Only thing i loose with the onex system is the control over color… as they only provide dimming of the entire set and not individual color adjustment controls… however i still think this would be more for the viewer then for the plants as the emitted spectrum is already optimized for the right wavelengths in red and blue according to the website…

Thank you all already for the feedback and help!