Marineland Aquatic Plant Lighting System

[scottwww]

Marineland is going to be offering a new LED light for planted tanks.

http://www.marineland.com/sites/mari...l.aspx?id=4653

I'm looking for a third light for my new 37 gallon column tank. I'm concerned that the two Marineland Double Bright LED lights just are not enough light to grow the dwarf hairgrass at about 24 inches down. Really, just one of the lights illuminates the hairgrass. One light illuminates the background plants, and the mid-ground gets just spillover light from the foreground and background.

I like the low-profile styling of these two lights, but I think it is just insufficient to meet medium to high light requirements.

Really, this thread should be more about the new LED from Marineland, than about my tank specifically, but what I am asking could apply to others who might consider this light.

There isn't that much information that I can find on this new LED light. I want to see a light spectrum graph and specs for PAR/PUR. This picture of the box is too small:



Also, would two of these be too much lighting for one tank? What I am thinking is that one of these would likely not illuminate the whole tank. I may want to have one for the background and one for the foreground, and use one of the ML Double Bright LEDs for the mid-ground.

Any thoughts or information?

[somewhatshocked]

There have been a couple discussions here on the forum about it over the past couple months. Remains to be seen if it'll be a solid fixture.

Though, I have a few Double Bright units that I use on low light tanks and am really happy with them. The ones shorter than 36" aren't that great.

Whether or not these fixtures are adopted well by the community? That all depends on price point. If you have to use two of them to adequately light your tank and maybe a third fixture to really balance things out? I think that's honestly wasted money. You could DIY your own LED fixture that will likely look better, perform better and cost less.

[scottwww]

In reading the Q&A on Marineland's website,

...our light has 1 watt, 6,500K white leds and 3 watt RGB LEDS (RGB means 460 nm blue, 660 nm red, and 660 green). Each type is a different spectrum and serves a different purpose for plant growth. PAR/LUX at a depth of 12" would be 172/10530 and at 24? would be 83/4810. These numbers are for all four models

If that produced 83 PAR at 24" down, and if it was was the right spectrum, I guess that would be good PUR and enough light to grow anything?

I asked Marineland's contact us: "My question is about the Marineland Aquatic Plant Lighting System. Since Lumens and Lux are specifications more for the brightness to our eyes, and less about Photosynthetically Usable Radiation, do you have some specs that might be more useful? Perhaps even just the spectrum charts that are printed on the box? And for aesthetics, how about the Color Rendering Index?"

[scottwww]

Originally Posted by somewhatshocked

There have been a couple discussions here on the forum about it over the past couple months. Remains to be seen if it'll be a solid fixture.

Though, I have a few Double Bright units that I use on low light tanks and am really happy with them. The ones shorter than 36" aren't that great.

Whether or not these fixtures are adopted well by the community? That all depends on price point. If you have to use two of them to adequately light your tank and maybe a third fixture to really balance things out? I think that's honestly wasted money. You could DIY your own LED fixture that will likely look better, perform better and cost less.

DIY may be a good way to go. But then it would require even more time learning what to use, and how to build it. Maybe it would give the better result. I'll have to consider that.

But if these new LEDs are priced about like the Reef Capable LEDs, I could probably get a couple of them and be done with it. Apparently they even have built-in timers for the lights, with moonlight run independent of the rest.

Still need more info... I'll search for those other discussions.

[somewhatshocked]

I plan to buy a couple once they hit the market to test out.

I'm sure everyone will be tired of my ranting about them the second they hit.

[scottwww]

This morning I called them at Marineland to ask my questions about this light.

I wanted to know the specification for Color Rendering Index. Also asked about the light spread angle of the LEDs. I wanted to get a better picture of the light spectrum graph from the box. And I asked if the RGB LEDs are individual red LEDs, blue LEDs, and green LEDs, or somehow to have RGB in one LED. Maybe they could provide a picture of the LED side of the fixture.

They couldn't answer any of these questions. Apparently they don't want to release these details before the product release. (I wonder if they will not release some of it at all, like the CRI.) He had mentioned that the 6500k LEDs were 0.6 watts. The Marineland website says:

1 watt 6,500K White LEDS
3 watt RGB LEDs

The guy I spoke with explained that the product was supposed to be released March 15. But there was a flaw that needed to be corrected before product release. It's expected to be on the market in June.

This had me thinking that I may not want to wait, but instead to find a different light that is already known to be a good one.

[samamorgan]

I would suggest checking out the TMC tile lights. Perfect form factor for a column tank. The 1000 ND puts out 52 PAR at 25". Plenty to grow anything you want. GLA has them available. Spendy, but very high quality products, compatible with aquarium controllers for sunrise/sunset dimming.

[NyteBlade]

Interesting. I've held off buying all T5HO units because the new LED fixtures that have been coming out. But the truth is, at this point, all of them seem to be underpowered compared to their fluorescent counterparts, or just significantly more expensive.

[nvladik]

In case anyone is interested in the price, found one site taking pre-orders:


18" - 24"
Available for Backorder.Expected on 5/28/2012 47433006
$189.99

24" - 36"
Available for Backorder.Expected on 5/28/2012 47433007
$264.99

36" - 48"
Available for Backorder.Expected on 5/28/2012 47433008
$359.99

48" - 60"
Available for Backorder.Expected on 5/28/2012 47433009
$459.99

[madness]

For people with smaller tanks (24" or less) who don't want to spend a fortune on an LED light the new Finnex Ray II DD (daylight) fixtures appear to be a great option.

More low medium - medium light but 40-50 mmol of PAR is a great range to be in.

[Linsanity]

I am glad that I didn't took advice from the people here and didn't wait for this LED light, it didn't come out early to mid May as they said and they also said it's about the same as their reef LED but look at those prices, it's way more expensive than their reef LED.

[nvladik]

Originally Posted by Linsanity

I am glad that I didn't took advice from the people here and didn't wait for this LED light, it didn't come out early to mid May as they said and they also said it's about the same as their reef LED but look at those prices, it's way more expensive than their reef LED.

I am sure as more firms start selling them, prices will drop, but I am too very unhappy. Price is outrageous.

[zonamav]

Maybe that site is trying to gouge early adopters. Dissapointing if thats the real price.

Sent from my VM670 using Tapatalk

[Hoppy]

Ebay will probably be selling Chinese copies for $50 in a few months

And that reminds me: I was looking at one of the Chinese copies of something yesterday and noted that the description said that the buyer has to pay the import duties for it, as they will not cheat by assigning a super low value to it, or calling it a gift. I wonder how long before some of us get into problems buying Chinese copies?

[nvladik]

Originally Posted by Hoppy

Ebay will probably be selling Chinese copies for $50 in a few months

And that reminds me: I was looking at one of the Chinese copies of something yesterday and noted that the description said that the buyer has to pay the import duties for it, as they will not cheat by assigning a super low value to it, or calling it a gift. I wonder how long before some of us get into problems buying Chinese copies?

Could be another trick? Say they pay import fees, thus price is a little higher, but in reality they still list it as a gift?