Last Updated on June 10, 2024 by admins
Can LED lights grow aquarium plants? Stay with us and learn everything you need to make your aquarium plants thrive.
Aquarium tanks are focal points for our homes. They are attractive, and according to experts, can help improve relaxation and overall mood. Given the huge benefits that aquariums offer, who wouldn’t love to have a unique decoration in their home with beautiful natural-grown plants? In order to excel at creating this ideal atmosphere, let’s dive into the factors which help make this possible.
If you are a fan of aquariums with beautifully grown foliage, you need proper lighting; otherwise, your plants will struggle to thrive. This is why we want to address the subject of LED lights for the use of growing aquarium plants. Keep reading and find out the answer to this, as well as several other details that might interest you.
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Why Can’t Plants Thrive Without Proper Lighting?
Before we address this question, it’s important to understand the critical role that light plays in the lives of your aquarium plants. In short, you can look at light as a source of fuel for your plants, because without it, the process of photosynthesis cannot take place.
However, like most things, there needs to be a certain balance with light. If you give the tank too much light, the health of your plants will start to decline and their growth is likely to be stunted. This also causes algae to grow, which can make the tank unsightly along with reducing oxygen levels available for the fish. On the other hand, if the amount of light is insufficient, this can also harm health of your plants. While the proper number of hours will differ depending on the plant and the brightness of the light, most plants do best with 8-10 hours of lighting.
A balance in changing the day and night cycle is highly desirable as it has the ability to stimulate the growth of your plants without causing an explosion of the algae population in the tank.
Plants that grow in an aquarium tank that is exposed to direct sunlight are far more likely to thrive, but unwanted algae will thrive along with them. Therein lies the importance of artificial light, as it can provide more customized control over your tank’s lighting requirements. Such lights usually have different timers, with which you can limit the amount of light your plants receive to a few hours a day. This will allow your living plants to thrive while limiting the growth of algae.
Can Led Lights Grow Aquarium Plants?
Yes, aquarium plants will definitely grow under LED lights. Most important of all is that the light emits in the right spectrum. As for the full spectrum, it actually means that the color temperature lies between 5,000 – 6,500 Kelvins, which corresponds to the temperature of natural sunlight.
However, don’t be fooled when buying, because classic LED lights don’t have the right color spectrum to grow aquarium plants in the best possible way. Namely, there are specialized LED lights intended exclusively for this purpose. They are made in such a way that they are very similar in color to natural sunlight. In addition, we must emphasize that they are quite affordable, create little heat, and most importantly, fit common fixtures.
The LED light from Aquaneat is a popular option for aquariums that are 5.5 gallons or less. It is adjustable to fit tanks that range from 12″ to 16″ across. This is very easy to operate, having only an on/off option, and emitting a color temperature of 6,500 Kelvins which imitates midday sunlight. It is a very bright light, as far as aquarium lights are concerned, so can easily improve the growth of plants. One potential downside of its simplicity is that it does not include a timer, which means that you will need to manually turn on/off to allow the plants to receive the proper amount of light, and curb the growth of algae.
If you prefer something with a bit more customizable capacity, Hygger sells an LED aquarium light which offers more automated features to allow you to spend less time operating the light and avoid mistakes. The light even has a setting called “Natural Mode,” which attempts to change the quality of the light as the day progresses, obviously imitating the outdoors. If you want to specifically program the light to a different type of setting, this can be done with 6, 10 and 12 hour increments, with 5 levels of brightness and an on/off option for the various colored lights. While the vast majority of customers are pleased with this light, there have been a few cases where some of the bulbs have been faulty after purchase or within the year.
Finally, if you’re willing to dish out a bit more investment upfront, Fluval provides an LED light of excellent quality which can be operated via Bluetooth. Among the three listed here, this one offers the greatest extent of customization. It allows you to independently control the amount of each color, therefore adjusting the Kelvin color temperature to suit the needs of your unique plant environment. There are multiple pre-set environments that are programmed into the light to mimic varying environments. And all can be controlled and adjusted from an app on your phone!
What To Look For When Choosing The Ideal LED Lights?
Emitting the proper spectrum, or color temperature, into the aquarium is important to the overall health of your plants. When they grow and develop in nature, plants get their light from the sun; however, when grown in tanks, we are the ones who have to make an effort to mimic the daylight in our aquarium.
Summarized below are the features that an ideal LED light should have, measured in nanometers (nm):
- 50% or more red light in the wavelength range of 630 – 700 nm
- 35% or more green light in the wavelength range 500 – 580 nm
- 15% or less blue light in the wavelength range of 435 – 495 nm
According to experts, the combination of these colors will effectively meet the needs of your plants.
Furthermore, it is necessary to pay attention to the following factors: tank size, plant type, light characteristics, and Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR).
Whether the size of your tank is large or small will impact your need for lighting, given that the distribution of light needs to fully cover the tank as equally as possible. Another thing you need to pay attention to is the plants you plan to grow, because not all plants have the same light requirements. Furthermore, different LED lights have different powers and characteristics, which actually means that not all are equally strong to support the life of aquarium plants.
To Conclude – LED Lights Can Grow Aquarium Plants
Aquarium plants can thrive under LED lights, but it all depends on the intensity of the light. When choosing a light that will beautify your aquarium tank, be sure to pay attention to the two most important things, the tank’s depth and how well the light will spread across it.
If you provide your plants with the required amount of light for the recommendable period of time each day, they will have the necessary environment to effectively perform the process of photosynthesis.
We hope you find this article useful. If you have any questions, please let us know in the section below.
You might also be interested in Can I Use Grow Light For The Aquarium? A Short Guide To Quick Success
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