Hi all, and a quick Q about lighting if I may?

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wombat74

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Hi everyone,

I've been keeping fish on and off for about 15 years, starting with a tiny tank with some guppies through to experimenting (poorly) with discus. I'm currently trying to establish a planted aquarium in my Blue Planet 160L tank:

IMG_0755.jpg

At the moment I just have a piece of ghostwood in there along with some crypts, hairgrass, ambulia, and a couple of sickly stems of ludwigia. I've been running a borrowed LED Zeal 120 light on there, but I need to give it back, and have two LED tubes designed for my tank to replace it, but I'm not sure if they're going to be suitable (for reference the two new tubes are the ones lighting the tank in the above picture).

The tubes have the following lighting spectrum (according to the box they came in anyway):
IMG_0754.jpg
I wonder if any of your fine selves would be able to tell if they're going to be ok for my tank or not? I am planning on putting CO2 in there.

I was also considering getting a set of these lights: https://makemyled.com/2-x-flora-sun-40w-dual-channel-full-spectrum-pendant-mml-florasun-402/, but if the ones I have are ok for now, I'd prefer to divert the money into a CO2 system instead.

Thanks very much :)
 
are your old lights only 1 watt? if yes then that seems a bit low.

The colour spectrum is off as well. It has lots of blue and not much red. You want red and blue in equal parts and yellow and green don't do much so can be wherever. However, too much yellow light will make the water look yellow. Lots of blue light helps to make things look white and bright and clear.

If you have 1 light with lots of red, and 1 with lots of blue then it will balance out.

Check the wattage on your current light unit that you have to return, and get something similar to that.
 
Thanks for the response, Colin.

The tubes (bars? strips?) have 12 x 1 watt LED modules in them, so 2 12 watt strips in total. The light I had to take back was a 120 watt LED pendant, so a... minor... difference in output between the two.

With the 120 Watt lights I did notice the tips of the Ambulia in my tank had started to turn brown, which google is telling me is caused by not enough light, too much light, not enough carbon, and too much carbon simultaneously. Basically I want to set this tank up right, but there's just so much contradictory information out there, it's hard to filter.
 
yeah, just a wee bit of difference between the two light units :)

Ambulia, Cabomba, Hygrophillas and swordplants all get red/ brown tips (new growth) when given lots of bright light and nutrients. These same plants (with the exception of swordplants) actually close their leaves up when they have had enough light. When they are using light they have the leaves out sideways from the stem. But when they have had enough light, they move the leaves upright and have them almost wrapped around/ flush with the stem to reduce the surface area being exposed to the light.

Your tank looks about 2 foot tall, if so you will need reasonably high wattage globes to penetrate the water and get to the plants at the bottom. The 2 x 120watt globes did a pretty good job and I would look for something similar to that.

If you can get 120watt globes and a dimmer switch, you can turn it down in the morning and evening and brighten it during the middle of the day to simulate natural sunlight.
 
Good estimation - it's a 60cm tall tank. I guess I need to save up fast to get some of those lights. Thanks for your help :)
 
Check your local hardware store (Bunnings, Mitre 10, whatever) or lighting store, and see if they have any high wattage LED globes. Get one with a Kelvin rating around 6500K (standard white light/ daylight globe). Then find a light fitting for them and put the globe above your tank.

I got a portable floodlight with cord and put a switch in it and screwed a high wattage compact fluoro in it. It came with a spring clamp so I just clipped it to a stand above the tank. You should be able to do something similar with LED globes and its a cheap way to get light now while you look around for other globes.
 
I won't comment on the LED units as I have no good experience with LED. What Colin says makes sense.

But I will caution on the CO2...as soon as you add diffused CO2, you up the balance which means more intense lighting and more (usually daily) nutrient dosing, otherwise you will have a tank of algae. Many think CO2 is necessary, but the opposite is closer to the truth. Unless you are planning an aquatic garden where plants are the focus with no fish, I would avoid CO2 so you can keep the light lower (which is more beneficial to fish) and fewer fertilizers (also better for fish).
 
Thanks again Colin - I hadn't thought of seeing what Bunnings had, that's a brilliant idea, and thanks Byron,

Keeping a CO2 planted tank has been a want of mine for quite a while, which has only gotten worse once I discovered George Farmer videos. There are no fish in the tank yet, and I was only planning on getting a small number of fish in there once the plants were better established. There are so many options and opinions nowadays I'm beginning to miss the old days of just buying a cheapie hood and getting some fluorescent tubes to stick in it
 

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