LEDs and planted tanks?!

[myjohnson]

lol, yeah dude.

I don't trust LEDs with no heatsink on them to grow anything.

[eklikewhoa]

As cheap as T5HO fixtures are going for right now it's hard to justify spending the extra coin on the LED, you could get a massive T5 fixture that would evenly light a big tank for what it would cost to adequately light a nano tank with LEDs.

As fancy as they are I'm not much of a believer yet. I would pick a nice T5 set up or even metal halide/T5 over LEDs any day. Nothing sets off a clean tank like MH

[myjohnson]

o, fo sho!

Personally, I think MH/HQI is still king. Super bright and shimmer effect.

The reason why LEDs have not taken off with planted tanks as it has done with reef tanks is b/c the heat reduction benefit really isn't there.

Reef tanks need chillers due to heat issues. With LEDs additional cost is off-set by the fact that LEDs produce almost no heat so no need for a chiller. The heat issue is not a major concern with planted tanks.

Even with that said, IMHO the one thing LEDs have over any other light is complete dimability. Total control from 0%-100%.

[Totenkampf]

My currently LED fixture has two 15w LEDs.

It's just a little brighter than the normal 3w LEDs I have on there.

It's not really about what we can see...it's more about the actually PAR numbers.

true, since we see greens and yellows it could be bombarding blue and red peaks and look dim to us

[Totenkampf]

what temperature range were those 10k LEDS EK?

dimmable is cool, i saw a terrarium T8 fixture that slowly increases and decreases over an hour for dawn and dusk periods and it was cheap. i wish i could see T5 ballasts like that.