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Low/medium or high lighting

oscar

Member
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15 Aug 2017
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I have a Fluval f90 aquarium which is a couple of years old, it has the Fluval LED light unit on the brackets ( a couple of inches above tank) - it also come with a dimmer for light intensity.

Need help with the following,i need to know if i have either low/medium or high lighting.
I would presume if not dimmed - would be medium/high??
If dimmed say 50% would be - low??

Reason i need to know is that I want to get some low light plants/ start using Aquascaper Complete Liquid Plant Food 500ml, but need to know which lighting i come under?? as if medium will need to add liquid carbon also, and if high will need co2.

I'm showing my ignorance here as i have no idea on this, i just want a clear/ concise answer if possible.

Help :( much appreciated
 
The Fluval F series tanks shipped with various lights over the years - posting details from your light set would help

My general impression of the system is low to med light with the kits lights I’ve seen, though recently Hagen included a Fresh 3.0 (& controller) with an F90 ... definitely much higher intensity than the usual kit LEDs
 
The thing is, your question has no easy straigh foreward answer.. Since what you need to know is PAR values the specific light produces. And the only one able to help you is the manufacturer if they ever tested their light setups for it and documented this data. But actualy they don't, even if they would than for our purpose as aqaurium light it still aint very accurate data. Because PAR values change significantly at different heights. For example if measured 10 cm bellow the light it might be 100 par and measured 40cm bellow the light it might reduce to 20 par. Than there also is a water column, this also breaks the light significantly and reduces it even further if the water aint cristall clear.

So manufacturers don't even bother to gather this data because it is much to complicated and too expensive and much too dynamic to be of any significant value. Not enough people need this data to make testing for it worth while.

Thus they simply give Lumens and Color in °Kelvin. And a simple conversion table Par vs lumen vs °K doesn't excist, too many influences and worthless without very expensive mearuring sensors.

Back in the day tube lights were still the main light source for aqauriums and these lights were pretty steady in performance regarding color, watts and lumens, some nerdy hobbyists took measurments and created charts. Bottom line conclusion up to 50 par it is in the low light range, from 50 to 100 par it's in the medium range and over 100 par it's in the high range. But this was all measured with tube lights and the use of reflectors.

Now the last few years LED light became more and more popular, 4 years ago the majority was still very sceptic if leds were any good for aquarium use. But in a short time led developed into a more and more powerfull source. It's actualy this freaking fast performance development that makes it imposible to give any valid steady performance data on them. Today it is this and a month later a new model is developed that performs double. And there are so many different version developed in a short periode we can't see the forest for the trees anymore. They can look the same, but performance can vary from factory to factory.. The old ones are yet not sold out and new beter ones are already available. Makes it about impossible for designers and trademarks to come up with a steady tested commercial budget product for the general public. The led industry is driving everybody completely nuts at the moment and yet nobody knows where it ends it's still on going.

Next to this, led is a completely different light source and can't realy be compaired with the older tube light data out there. A tube light it pretty steady in performance for the first year of it's life and maybe even after that. For a led this can be significantly different, they might give light 10 x longer than a tube, but if not sufficiently cooled it's performance decreases, it's color spectrum can change etc. Also when led is dimmed it's color spectrum can change and not only dimming causes par to change also color change has par influence.

Somebody can come along and say take 4000 lumen on a 40 cm tall tank and you'll be around the medium light range. And you have to take their word for it.. :) What you in the end realy get out of it is trail and error. Since medium can be anything between 50 and 100 par of which we still know ZIP if the vendor only has lumen and °K data in their specs.

Bottom line, sorry for the long story to tell you nothing about your targeted lights. You might want to read further here if you are still intrested in charts and data.
https://www.plantedtank.net/forums/10-lighting/105774-par-vs-distance-t5-t12-pc-new-chart.html
And maybe go back to a tube light setup and use that data to get closer to your desired goal. Or go to the high end and sufficently tested led products such as Kessil lights. But than you also pay the price.
 
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