# Lighting a deep tank



## fishyfishy (Apr 21, 2011)

Hello everyone - Not sure if I've posted this thread in the correct forum.

I am in the process of getting together all the equipment needed to get my 150g tank up and running.

I plan on it being a planted tank.

My main concern is the lighting. The tank is 48" wide x 24" deep x 36" tall. As you can see it is a very tall tank and even if I was to put in a 6" substrate I still have to try to get usable light down 30"

I was planning on going with a DIY LED setup but have no idea if LEDs would be able to supply light down to that level.

Would anybody with a bit of experience in lighting be able to help me plan out a LED system or is LED out of the question.

Thanks!


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## coldmantis (Apr 5, 2010)

Pretty sure 2 of the SBreef Basic for planted will do for a tank your size, the LEDS on them are pretty powerful and should penetrate to the bottom.

https://sbreeflights.com/sbox-fw-plant-lights/21-basic-fresh-water-plant-led-light.html


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## wtac (Mar 17, 2006)

Plants aren't as picky for light spectrum as corals.

Depending on how high the light is going to be to the water surface and lens angle play an important role for spread and penetration to get the target PAR levels. The lights coldmantis mentioned will do the job. If you're OCD and "gotta know", borrow a PAR meter.

Years ago I set-up a 90gal easy planted with Java fern, crypts, mosses, _Anubias sp_ and _Crinum sp_. A single 48" BML 6500K w/20* lens where the light is mounted 36" above the water line does the job perfectly fine and hit 115 PAR on the substrate.

Plants don't grow fast but the Java fern and moss are pruned back monthly.


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## coldmantis (Apr 5, 2010)

You didn't mention what kind of plants you wanted to keep, if you are going low tech low lights java fern, anubias, most, and crypts. making a DIY gu10 fixture which is pretty cheap to do will probably work for you. I remember watching a video on youtube he had a 100+ gallon tank and he only used like less than 10 gu10 led and his plants grew great. If I were to build a diy gu10 led I will probably use like 60 of them lol.

Found the video


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## fishyfishy (Apr 21, 2011)

wtac said:


> Plants aren't as picky for light spectrum as corals.
> 
> Depending on how high the light is going to be to the water surface and lens angle play an important role for spread and penetration to get the target PAR levels. The lights coldmantis mentioned will do the job. If you're OCD and "gotta know", borrow a PAR meter.
> 
> ...


Thank you for the reply. My concern with the light is that it will have 30"+ of water to penetrate. A typical 90 if i am not mistaken is 24" tall if you have an inch or so of substrate that leaves only 22 - 23" of water to penetrate.

You may be right and I may be over thinking it though.


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## fishyfishy (Apr 21, 2011)

coldmantis said:


> You didn't mention what kind of plants you wanted to keep, if you are going low tech low lights java fern, anubias, most, and crypts. making a DIY gu10 fixture which is pretty cheap to do will probably work for you. I remember watching a video on youtube he had a 100+ gallon tank and he only used like less than 10 gu10 led and his plants grew great. If I were to build a diy gu10 led I will probably use like 60 of them lol.
> 
> Found the video


Yeah a low light tank would be easy but I would have liked to have a grass carpet on the substrate. I haven't really done all the research for the planting just yet... I have to see how much light i can get down there in order to put together a list of suitable plants.


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## fishyfishy (Apr 21, 2011)

coldmantis said:


> Pretty sure 2 of the SBreef Basic for planted will do for a tank your size, the LEDS on them are pretty powerful and should penetrate to the bottom.
> 
> https://sbreeflights.com/sbox-fw-plant-lights/21-basic-fresh-water-plant-led-light.html


I will look into this fixture thanks


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## coldmantis (Apr 5, 2010)

fishyfishy said:


> Yeah a low light tank would be easy but I would have liked to have a grass carpet on the substrate. I haven't really done all the research for the planting just yet... I have to see how much light i can get down there in order to put together a list of suitable plants.


You just put the two words that dont' go together which is low light and a grassy carpet. I would pick one and focus on that, remember a carpeting plant is at the bottom of the tank and your tank is already 36" so you are going to need to go with the sbreef basic lights to grow a nice carpet.


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## fishyfishy (Apr 21, 2011)

coldmantis said:


> You just put the two words that dont' go together which is low light and a grassy carpet. I would pick one and focus on that, remember a carpeting plant is at the bottom of the tank and your tank is already 36" so you are going to need to go with the sbreef basic lights to grow a nice carpet.


Exactly what I was saying. It may not be possible to grow a carpet down there  That's why I'm trying to figure out what is possible.

If its not possible to get enough light down there for a high light / high tech setup then we move to either mid light or low light plants


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## coldmantis (Apr 5, 2010)

Full transparency here before you decide on the SB Reef, I do not own it nor am I a fan of LEDs for planted tanks. I'm old school and prefer the tried and true T5HO. But the reviews online are possitive and people say these lights grow plants better than T5HO especially the red plants. A Friend of mines decided to try them and he said it's very powerful and blinding. His plants grew great and his only con for the light is that he is used to the Perceived colour of T5HO and LEDs to him is too warm of a colour. He's using 1 16" SB reef basic on a 40g breeder. He told me when he ordered the lights it came shipped by DHL and he had to pay customs i believe it was 30 bucks but I could be wrong. It made sense cost wise to get these lights because he was going to replace all his bulbs on his quad T5 Ho and fix a broken ballast which would of cost the same as a SB reef with shipping plus the customs.

This is what it looks like on his tank, I think hes only running the lights at like 30% or so.


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## characinfan (Dec 24, 2008)

Not sure if this is directly applicable, but I have a 36"-tall terrarium (not aquarium -- geckos) with these LEDs. I installed them about a month ago and the plants are doing way better than they were with the CFL grow lights I had in them before.


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## slipfinger (May 11, 2016)

I have heard ok things about the SB Reef Lights.

First they are very powerful you'll have no issues with achieve decent PAR levels directly under the fixtures themselves. Running both channels at 10%, 30" from the substrate will give you around 95 PAR.

Here is some data for you to look over, again this is 30" from the substrate directly under the fixture.



> Measured at 30" above substrate
> Blue Red Lux Min	Lux Max	Avg PAR
> 10	10	6782	7101	91.87276554
> 20	20	7316	8120	102.1499682
> ...


Here is where the troubles come in to play.

First is the spread on these lights. The par drops off a lot as you move away from directly under the fixture. My understanding is removing the outer lenses and of course raising the fixture up higher will help, but you have to turn the channels up to achieve the same PAR and the light spill is not pleasant.

The second issue is the colour retention when you have to run the channels at the lower %'s to keep the PAR down directly under the light. Colours do not look very nice to the eye.

For example, there is someone of Facebook that uses 3 SB Reef Planted over his 120G 48 x 24 x 24" tank. He has them all set at 50% which gives off a nice colour but he has to have the lights sitting 18" off the water surface. The amount of light spilling out into the room must be unbearable, or he must run a skirt or canopy over the tank to keep it manageable.

In saying all of the above, there is a lot of positives with these lights, cheap, powerful and people are having great success using them over their planted tanks.

Personally I am a fan of T5's because I like the colour they give off. You can purchase a 6 bulb fixture from growlights.ca for $199 CAN which includes free shipping and 6 bulbs. I run a 6 bulb unit 31" from my substrate and I'm around 120+ PAR. This is on a 75G tank I might add, tanks is only 18" deep.

In all honesty, If you can't grow the most demanding carpeting plants with 100 PAR at substrate, which I'm sure you can achieve using a six bulb T5ho fixture sitting above your tank, you are doing something else wrong.

My current bulb configuration.



Here is a picture of some PAR readings I took of my tank, the bulb configuration is different than what I am currently using because I changed some bulbs around to lower my PAR. The higher # is all 6 bulbs running and the lower # is just front and back bulbs running. Fixture is 31" from substrate.

Bulbs front to back
6400K Sunblaster
Zoo Med Flora Sun
3000K Sunblaster
6400K Sunblaster
ATI Blue Plus ?
Giesemann AquaFlora


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## PCUSER (Jun 1, 2017)

If your concerned about light getting to the bottom, why not attach your plants to rocks or large driftwood, and raise them up a bit. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## fishyfishy (Apr 21, 2011)

slipfinger said:


> I have heard ok things about the SB Reef Lights.
> 
> First they are very powerful you'll have no issues with achieve decent PAR levels directly under the fixtures themselves. Running both channels at 10%, 30" from the substrate will give you around 95 PAR.
> 
> ...


The tank looks great thank you for the info!!

I was trying to stay away from the T5 because the cost of running the fixture + replacing bulbs every year adds up... LED will have a higher up front cost but overall will be less expensive to run.

As you can see my tank itself is very tall and that is the issue... outside of the air above the tank I'll have to penetrate another 30" of water.


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## fishyfishy (Apr 21, 2011)

PCUSER said:


> If your concerned about light getting to the bottom, why not attach your plants to rocks or large driftwood, and raise them up a bit.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


This looks like it may be my only options  or somehow get lights on the outside of the tank at lower levels shining into the tank. Or may something waterproof directly in the tank....


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## slipfinger (May 11, 2016)

fishyfishy said:


> The tank looks great thank you for the info!!
> 
> I was trying to stay away from the T5 because the cost of running the fixture + replacing bulbs every year adds up... LED will have a higher up front cost but overall will be less expensive to run.
> 
> As you can see my tank itself is very tall and that is the issue... outside of the air above the tank I'll have to penetrate another 30" of water.


Replacing bulbs is overrated and not needed has much as people state. I am running bulbs that are a year and a half old and if anyone can see the difference in growth I'd like to them show me, my plants still need trimming once a week.

You can get 6500/3000K bulbs from hydroponics shops for $12ea.


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## fishyfishy (Apr 21, 2011)

slipfinger said:


> Replacing bulbs is overrated and not needed has much as people state. I am running bulbs that are a year and a half old and if anyone can see the difference in growth I'd like to them show me, my plants still need trimming once a week.
> 
> You can get 6500/3000K bulbs from hydroponics shops for $12ea.


Cool I will look into it. Thanks for all the info


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## Professor Monkey (Jan 8, 2015)

Something to consider...

I have a 30" tall 220 gallon. Reaching down to the substrate requires draining at least a quarter of the water, removing the glass lids, and standing on a chair to dive into the tank. My back does not agree with the activity, hence why when I rescaped the tank I went with slow growing low maintenance crypts. Weekly carpet trimming makes me sore just thinking about it.

I have 2 rows of Current USA Satellite LEDs on the tank and they give close to medium light at the substrate. It grows un-demanding plants very well.


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