Black mould in tank

Aquael lights confuse me.
I always understood that a K rating of 6500 was best for plants as this has red and blue light in the spectrum. Aquael give the 'Sunny' lights as 6500K but the spectrum with virtually no red. Their 'Plant' lights do have red and blue in the spectrum, but the K rating is 8000K. This is the wrong way round from what I understand

Essjay said:

Aquael lights confuse me.
I always understood that a K rating of 6500 was best for plants as this has red and blue light in the spectrum. Aquael give the 'Sunny' lights as 6500K but the spectrum with virtually no red. Their 'Plant' lights do have red and blue in the spectrum, but the K rating is 8000K. This is the wrong way round from what I understand

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The "Daylight" 6500K should be ideal here, on it own for "x" continuous hours each 24-hour period. I wouldn't worry about the spectrum graph, I have seen similar for lighting I use and know works. The way the tube is manufactured with the various phosphors is part of all this, but beyond what I can explain.

The Aquael tubes are all LED - do they have phosphors?

I have the Plant tubes and can confirm that they have red, blue and white LEDs in the tube.

Essjay said:

The Aquael tubes are all LED - do they have phosphors?

I have the Plant tubes and can confirm that they have red, blue and white LEDs in the tube.

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I don't know much about LED. But I have found, when I was looking for a LED unit, that it is the makeup of the white LED's that matters. Having white, red and blue light-emitting diodes in a row is not the same, and usually fails. You get red and blue "streaks" in the water at the surface. The composition of the colours in the white light-emitting diodes is the key.

I think of it as sunlight. When the sun shines, all those colours are in the mix, but we see one "white" which if memory serves me is somewhere in the 5000K-6000K range. The spectrum appears in a rainbow, showing that the "white" is actually a mix. This is what we want in the tank light, a mix of colours such that we only perceive "white" but it is composed of red, blue and green.

Interesting, thank you.

I got these tubes after having had Superfish LED with only white individual LEDs. They gave little information on them when I got them, but later Superfish improved their website to include things like the K rating. I discovered that the ones I had were "for plant growth" with a K rating of 12,390 which is why I changed them for the Aquael plant tubes.

Edit - maybe I should swap one of the Aquaels for a Superfish and have one of each

Essjay said:

Interesting, thank you.

I got these tubes after having had Superfish LED with only white individual LEDs. They gave little information on them when I got them, but later Superfish improved their website to include things like the K rating. I discovered that the ones I had were "for plant growth" with a K rating of 12,390 which is why I changed them for the Aquael plant tubes.

Edit - maybe I should swap one of the Aquaels for a Superfish and have one of each

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If you really typed 12390K, I would not use that light. It can encourage algae (high blue), I had a 11000K tube along with a 6500K tube over my 115g tank several years ago, and noticed an improvement when the 11000K needed replacement and I used another 6500K in its place.

This is what they say for the lights I had, copied and pasted from the lighting brochure on their website

10290 Lux

167 Par

12390 Kelvin

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And it includes this logo

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