New... lighting

Hi,
Below is the tank i got given. Everything has been removed and its now just a naked tank.
As you can see there arent any lights. Would fitting lights to this be possible? How? And what do you recommend?
Im going for tetras and im thinking of doing a white light back and blue light front? Or just the bluer light up front. (Neon pic is what im going for as far as illumination goes. Believe its done by the bluer light?)
Thanks

Not sure how big this tank is but there are a number of options you could use.

Kind of depends on what you want, do you want to grow plants or perhaps just have fake silk plants, also your budget does have an impact on what options you could have.

There are a variety of different light units available, clip on lights, suspended pendent type lights, on rope of tank glass light fittings are just a few of what's available for all sizes and shapes of aquariums.

The there is the actual light itself, LED, T5 and T8 as well as several types of bulb fitted lamps as well.

On my tanks I have T8's, an older type of light generally and not as energy efficient as T5 or LED but it's what I personally like using, on my small 5 gallon tank I have a 3w led tube light that works perfectly for low demanding plants.

Non of these tanks run with co2 or high fertilising regime for high demanding plant like carpet type plants such as baby tears.

The more demanding the plant the more light you need, T8 are fine for low level plants, T5 is a more intense light which can be used for middle to higher level plants and LED can cover from cheap type only good for very low to very high demanding plants, all to do with budget in that regards LED.

Don't forget, the more intense the light, the more stressed fish are likely to get, they can be sensitive to lighting conditions, especially if you plan to get white or light covered substrate/sand.

Have a look online, and you'll soon see there's a vast array of light units available for all kinds of budgets and set ups.

A little research and asking what you specifically want to aim for from a light unit will go a long way, once you have more of an idea of what you'd like, then we can perhaps help a bit more with this from own experiences and learned knowledge.

thank you for your reply
will look into it a bit more.
but the major thing is, is there anything that i can fit to the tank above and not make it look tacky or just shoved on there? does anyone make anything that would fit to that tank and still look nice?
And yes it will be planted, it may sound silly but i enjoy the look of the plants as much as the fish themselves!! lol

I am making an assumption, but from your other new thread, I am assuming this is the same tank, so it is 60 cm length, 60 liter (15 gallons). If this is correct, I would suggest either LED, or T8 fluorescent (single tube), or incandescent using the CFL (compact fluorescent) spiral-type bulbs (2 sockets). I would forget pendant over such a small tank, and T5 is intense light that would be problematic here. Live plants would do well under the three suggested options, though LED can be tricky unless you know exactly what you're getting. I use T8 fluorescent tube or incandescent with CFL bulbs on my 8 tanks; my five or so forays into LED all failed, and the units went back to the store. Finding T8 fixtures is not easy now; mine have all needed repair (the ballasts usually give out after many years) and I have had to use shop lights in the housing in order to stay with T8 which I know very well and in my situation it is ideal lighting. My fish come first, so plants are chosen that will work under this light.

Any of these options would come as a fixture that sits across the tank frame (lengthwise). It seems tohave a cover glass in the photos, this would be essential (you cannot have lighting over water without a glass separator); if not, you can get a glass cover unit, plus the fixture. You could also buy a hood unit with the fixture included.

Back to the light and plants...you need a sufficient intensity for the plants, and then spectrum (light colour) is important. Be very careful of blue light; this is more piopular with marine tanks because it is essential with corals, but with freshwater planted tanks you need a mix of red and blue to drive photosynthesis, and red is the more important. Green added to this mix does improve plant growth, and gives a more true colour rendition. The blue "neon" line will still be quite brilliant, and the red will be enhanced.

Byron.

thats brilliant thanks! sorry yer it is the 60ltr. sorry new to all these 'forum' things!!

yes it has a glass top split in half.

ive looked at a few and ive come down to this, for ease and cost

https://www.aquaristiconline.com.au/collections/up-aqua/products/upaquaproledz20-60cm

https://www.aquaristiconline.com.au...red-led/products/blueplanetledfixture5pod60cm

https://www.aquaristiconline.com.au...ed-led/products/aquasyncrotrackledfixturetl60

i want it for plants but also to bring out the colour in the fish.... i do like the replaceable LEDs as i can put a few blue lights in for moonlighting... but ive read some excellent reviews on the first one....

help?

Are you going hi tech ( adding CO2 etc ) or low tec ( do as little as you can for the plants ) My suggestion would be low tech,

prefer low....

also can anyone ID these 2 plants i have circled

Check out my low tech sorority tank the only things I do is change 50% of the water once a week and add 1 milliliter of Seachen Flourish comprehensive.
My sorority rebuild

The light I use Animates(Aqua One) Extendable 10w LED light 35-50cm, It cost $49 at pet barn.

adz2332 said:

thats brilliant thanks! sorry yer it is the 60ltr. sorry new to all these 'forum' things!!

yes it has a glass top split in half.

ive looked at a few and ive come down to this, for ease and cost

https://www.aquaristiconline.com.au/collections/up-aqua/products/upaquaproledz20-60cm

https://www.aquaristiconline.com.au...red-led/products/blueplanetledfixture5pod60cm

https://www.aquaristiconline.com.au...ed-led/products/aquasyncrotrackledfixturetl60

i want it for plants but also to bring out the colour in the fish.... i do like the replaceable LEDs as i can put a few blue lights in for moonlighting... but ive read some excellent reviews on the first one....

help?

Click to expand...

Keeping in mind what I said before about my lack of knowledge with LED success...nevertheless I personally would not get one of these three. The second and third are not going to work, period, as I can bet there is little if any red in the white diodes. The first says suitable for planted tanks, but it also has a Kelvin of 8000K and this is too blue. You want to aim for 5000K to 7000K spectrum. The "daylight" tubes and CFL bulbs with 6500K work very well, and with two you can mix a lower K (say 5000K to 5500K) with a 6500K for a very nice light. I use this on all my dual tube tanks, and with the single tube and CFL I use only 6500K. This is the best light for plants.

Another issue with blue is that without a higher level of red in the white mix, the blue cannot be utilized by plants so algae easily takes advantage. This is why tanks with high blue light frequently have serious algae problems.

Moonlight was mentioned somewhere in this thread I think...this is a risk too. The blue "moon" light willnot benefit plants at all, so it becomes another algae issue. But more to the point, the fish need several hours of total black darkness each 24 hours. There is rarely any moonlight reaching the waters in the Amazon for example, due to the thick forest canopy. A couple of hours of moonlight after the main tank lights go out is OK, followed by several hours of total darkness (no ambient room light at all). But not for long stretches.

When I write of "red" I am not meaning red LED diodes along with white and blue diodes. The white light itself has a colour temperature, and with red, blue and green in the mix the Kelvin will be in the 6000K range, and this is what you want. I have tried one LED with red diodes, white diodes and blue diodes, and it was a mess; these colours appeared as streaks into the water, not good at all. The light colour has to be mixed.

Byron.

Like Byron, my knowledge is extremely limited on LED light units.

I can offer what I have learned from the LED units I have used in the past, I did have a Beamsworks LED unit but for a high tech set up which ultimitely failed due to rampant hair algae growth that made me throw in the towel, never used that light unit again, still in the cupboard somewhere. That light would work on the right set up with C02 and routine fertilzer dosings but on a larger and more importantly, a deeper tank than what I had it on in the first place. Lots of lesson learned here.

But before that I had a fairly cheap ish LED unit that fitted over a 90 litre tank, I simply did not like how the light made the plants and fish look, made everything look kind of weird and out of place, it also had a 'moonlight' only switch for the evening, that was even worse and serve very little, if any, purpose at all.

After that, I simply went back to what I know better, T5 and T8 lights, I tend to favour the T8 simply because of the more varied colour spectrums and usually around 6,700K and my plants thrive on this, all sorts of low tech plants being various cryptocorynes, vallisernias, anubias, balansae and suchlike with also floating lettuce plants, a bonus is seeing very little algae to boot (touch wood it stays that way).

The only LED light I use, is on my 5 gallon shrimp tank, a Aquael Leddy Tube 3w sunny, absolutely perfect and surprisingly very good. Again, there are various low tech plants being anubias, windelove java ferns and balansae plants seem to thrive under this LED, I'd recommend this for the smaller tanks. Very little algae once more, a bit of green spot algae on the glass I reckon simply due to the tank being a bit closer to the windows and getting a little indirect sunlight, but my snails take care of a certain amount of green algae from the glass so thats all good imho.

But every tank is different, so what works on my tanks may not work on others. Very much a case of trail and error to see what works best, at least for me anyway.