Aquarium Lighting Help

[tom731]

Hi all, Im looking for help with my aquarium lighting. I currently have a Juwel primo 70L (20gal) aquarium with the out of the box light and aquarium hood. The light is an LED tube (Juwel NovoLux LED 60) but it is very low wattage (8w) so I cant grow plants (all my attempts so far have ended with the plants dying) so am therefore looking for a new light. Ideally I would want a light that would allow me to grow low to medium light plants (ie 0.5w/litre - so I'd need around 35w).

All the aquarium lights that I have found look like they are for hoodless tanks, I cant see any of them fitting under the lid of my aquarium. Therefore it seems like I have a few options:

1) Ditch the hood and get a glass lid so the light can sit on top - this seems most likely but I cant find any glass aquarium lids (im in the UK) so if anyone knows of any that would be great.

2) find a light that will fit the hood - does anyone have experience with this aquarium and has upgraded the lighting while keeping the lid?

3) add more Juwel LED tubes to the hood - the hood has options to add two more of these LED tubes to it so I could add more to increase the lighting? Im not sure that this would do anything as the lights are still only 8w each.

If someone could help me on this that would be amazing, I should say that I still want a lid on my tank still so just getting rid of the lid isn't an option.

Thanks!

 

[mbsqw1d]

light intensity is measured in lumens rather than wattage. Wattage per litre used to work as a measure when it was incandescent or florescent lighting as they were all alike. With the introduction of LEDs, some are more efficient than others and so we need to look at their lumen and kelvin ratings.
20 lumens per litre is good for low light plants like ferns and anubius. 30-40 lumens per litre for medium grow plants like swords above 40 lumens per litre for high grow plants with red on them and dense carpeting plants.

So your light is 624 lumens, which gives you around 10 lumens per litre.. so at least doubling that would be ideal.

I'm not familiar with this tank/hood, do you think it would be straightforward to just add a second of the same light?

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Always nice to have another Tom on the forum.

Many hardware/home stores will have a glass shop. Give them the dimensions of your tank inside the top rim, and they can cut you a piece of glass for a few quid. Have them cut it lengthwise into about two pieces 3/4 and 1/4 its width, and you can use the narrower piece for a lid (meaning you don't have to lift up the whole thing every time you feed your fish).

 

[tom731]

Intensity of light intensity is measured in lumens rather than wattage. Wattage per litre used to work as a measure when it was incandescent or florescent lighting as they were all alike. With the introduction of LEDs, some are more efficient than others and so we need to look at their lumen and kelvin ratings.
20 lumens per litre is good for low light plants like ferns and anubius. 30-40 lumens per litre for medium grow plants like swords above 40 lumens per litre for high grow plants with red on them and dense carpeting plants.

So your light is 624 lumens, which gives you around 10 lumens per litre.. so at least doubling that would be ideal.

I'm not familiar with this tank/hood, do you think it would be straightforward to just add a second of the same light?

thanks for the response. The hood has space for two more of the same light so adding more would be fairly easy. Ideally id be able to find a light in similar form factor with more lumens but im not sure they exist!

 

[supperfish]

I vote for 1, try to find a clear lid on Amazon uk and you are freely to use any light you want. I use this with a Nicrew Sky LED Plus, I find this cheap but very good light in this article: https://portlandaquarium.net/planted-aquarium-led-light/

 

[Ridgerunner]

Hi all, Im looking for help with my aquarium lighting. I currently have a Juwel primo 70L (20gal) aquarium with the out of the box light and aquarium hood. The light is an LED tube (Juwel NovoLux LED 60) but it is very low wattage (8w) so I cant grow plants (all my attempts so far have ended with the plants dying) so am therefore looking for a new light. Ideally I would want a light that would allow me to grow low to medium light plants (ie 0.5w/litre - so I'd need around 35w).

All the aquarium lights that I have found look like they are for hoodless tanks, I cant see any of them fitting under the lid of my aquarium. Therefore it seems like I have a few options:

1) Ditch the hood and get a glass lid so the light can sit on top - this seems most likely but I cant find any glass aquarium lids (im in the UK) so if anyone knows of any that would be great.

2) find a light that will fit the hood - does anyone have experience with this aquarium and has upgraded the lighting while keeping the lid?

3) add more Juwel LED tubes to the hood - the hood has options to add two more of these LED tubes to it so I could add more to increase the lighting? Im not sure that this would do anything as the lights are still only 8w each.

If someone could help me on this that would be amazing, I should say that I still want a lid on my tank still so just getting rid of the lid isn't an option.

Thanks!

Here in the US, I saw glass aquarium lids (2 piece with rubber between) on Amazon.