I want to highly light a 38 gallon aquarium 36 by 12 and 20 inches deep.

How many watts/lumens do I need to get high light for a carpet? 50W 30W 10W

I'm guessing 2 30W or 50W LED flood light my dimensions.


Has anyone used a specific brand?

Can you dim certain lights?


Please help, Thanks

I get great results using a 50w 6500k flood from no ebay links allowed Its grown everything I throw at it. My tank is also about 20 inches tall. I keep mine mounted 3 inches above the water surface with a 3 1/2 inch deep substrate layer. Keep in mind these tend to have 120 degree angles to light distribution and can be unpleasant for viewing if not guarded when mounted high. Putting this light on my tank made co2 mandatory as well as a significant increase in my macro dosing. Photo for reference. I wouldnt expect each light to properly light more than an 18"x18" area. This tank is 13"x13".

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Should I use a 30W or 50W LED floodlights?

Also what substrate do you have?

I tried 30w and some of my plants were really in need of more light, my A Reineckii minis love the high light co2 and root tabs. I wanted to have all options open plant wise (I like stem plants) without breaking my pockets so i went with the 50w for 20 dollars. I used caribsea floramax black substrate with Aqua Solum humate capped with a thin layer of caribsea instant aquarium white sand Moonlight I believe its called. I used the sand to get my Monte Carlo carpet going and chose that brand because I used their saltwater sand in my reefs for years with no complaints. Having just a few sprigs of Monte Carlo to start with I burried them horizontally into the sand and waited for them to root in and grow. Only took 3 days to root in. I use api root tabs to feed my root feeders (higher npk than flourish tabs), and tropica specialized along with seachem flourish comprehensive, and api co2 booster. I do 2 weekly water changes of 30% and use reverse osmosis with seachem equilibrium added to balance gh. To adress the lack of co2 I set up a double 2 liter diy yeast and sugar co2 system. The co2 line ends with a cheap air stone under my koralia type powerhead that chops the bubbles finer and spreads them evenly through the entire water column. My drop checker stays more yellow than green and I get a ph drop from 7.5 to 6.4 with it running in my system. While the diy co2 works amazingly well I am switching over to pressurized co2 because a 20 lb tank would be relatively hassle free and considerably cheaper in the long run with a decent regulator allowing me to run co2 to multiple amd larger tanks. Ill be getting the fluval fresh and plant 2.0 for my upgrade project for its user features and quality of build. Would have tried one sooner but its 6x the price. Lol This flood has worked surprisingly well I must admit. The color spectrum isnt bad either.

Do you know how many lumens your light puts out?

4500-5000 lumens. Its really the par that matters most for our purpose though. I sent you a pm with a link to my light to save you some searching. Not all leds are made equal.

Would you be able to post the link publicly? That way more people can find this light that has been working well for you!

Ill look and see if I can find it. The 50w light is 1 year old now. I am using a 100w led flood on a 60 gallon cube now. I love it, and 60 or so dollars compared to 260 or more to light this tank is hard to argue with. Heres the link to the newish 100w light.

https://www.21ledusa.com/Flood_light...e_p/fl100w.htm

The 50w light is an SMD 50w 6500k Flood light, Ill find the seller on ebay I got it from and share a link. The 100w is awesome for my 2'x2' cube.

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