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What LED light are you running?


neo-2FX

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  • 1 year later...

@Xander, those lights look fine for shrimp. 

You should choose lights based on the type of plants you will have in the tank. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just to add some info here.

Starting with shrimp related lights. We had an ISTA LED 26cm. It was cheap and acted like it. There was a constant hum coming from the light when on and the output was disappointing. Not a light i would recommend. It was soon replaced with a Chihiros A series 36cm. Good dimmable light that has a bright white (not soft yellow) and on a 25cm high tank needed to be run at about half power.

On my display 45x27x30h i have a no name 45cm LED with just 10 LED's in it. It came with the tank and looks to be about 5 yo. There is a much warmer white (yellowish)  and it will maintain the growth of carpet plants at 30cm. When i want to boost the carpet growth i also put on another 45cm Led from Ming-Kong industries that came with a tank i got second hand. It has about 120 much smaller LED's but as you might imagine has a pretty impressive output. Neither has a dimmer so i just light swap as needed.

There is a Zetlight mini LED with a pendant stand and 3 LED's. Not dimmable and sitting on my daughters 36cm Beta tank. This light was a bit more expensive and looks great. I think it would be perfect on a 25cm cube display tank. Only drawback is it's not dimmable so tank selection needs to be spot on for the plants to thrive.

On to bigger tanks that are not shrimp related.

Our 90x35x45h  planted tank was running T5's, that were a couple of years old. The carpet plants, MC and Mini Hair grass, were struggling so when the tubes gave up some MMLED tubes were installed. There is a 6800k XB2 with 90deg lenses for the carpet and a sunset/sunrise 120deg lens for the taller plants and fish colour. It is not as bright white, because of the colour LED's i would say, but the carpet is responding much better and the colour adjustment, program-ability and other control you have is great.

The outdoor 6 foot tank has 2 30w 6500k LED spotlights. 120deg lens. They are hanging on adjustable mounts and are about 15cm from the top of the tank. Because this tank is outside and gets plenty of reflected light they are really there for viewing purposes but during the winter months they throw out enough light to keep low light plants happy. If i was going to go for some more demanding plants then 3 to 4 of them would be needed.

Last is a 90x30x40H tetra tank. It had T8 tubes but they just gave out this week and i have ordered a MMLED Chihiros replacement. It is a new LED that MMLED is bringing out and is more of a budget line to compete with the Chinese Chihiros lights but with Aussie workmanship and MMLED's warranty. With shipping it is about 50% more expensive that the cheapest i could find but you have the ability to customize them on ordering and all the specs on the LED's is available so you know what you are getting. I went with the RGB style because there is no demanding plants in this tank and i wanted some colour to make the tetra's pop a bit. I was immediately emailed  by Fred and told that this light would not be as bright as an A series light so we will see what it looks like when it arrives.

In the next couple of nights i will take some photo's and put them up so the colours of each can be compared.

 

 

 

Edited by Madmerv
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  • 10 months later...
  • 3 years later...

I used the different LED lights while I was just setting up my fish tank

Edited by kasterzanayed
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  • 4 months later...

My parents have an aquarium, so I don't know if this will help, but still want to leave a suggestion. They also liked the idea of installing a light strip in it, so they started looking on amazon. I don't know what went wrong, but it broke on the fifth day of use. I think it was a cheap Chinese thing (although the website told me it was waterproof and durable). They asked me for help finding a better option, and I advised them of the smart LED multi-color light strips I used in my car. Being pretty skeptical, my dad still decided to try them. They have been working fine for a month now and don't even flicker. Mom says the fish are happy, lol. I hope my comment was helpful

Edited by JarryPatyson
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