[Hoppy]

A Stingray LED light is definitely marginal for a 18 inch high tank. It works well on 12 inch high tanks, but the light intensity drops pretty fast at the longer distance. However, I think a Planted Plus would be too much light. A Planted Plus 24/7 light would work OK because you can adjust the brightness down to whatever level you want. Finnex no longer provides PAR data for their lights, and a standard Apogee PAR meter doesn't give as accurate a measurement of PAR for a light with significant red light in the spectrum, as it does with fluorescent lights, so most of the PAR data we have on these newer Finnex lights is just approximate. In other words, I don't know for sure how much light you would get with any of those Finnex lights. For now, I think I would just wait another month or so to see how this setup works out.

 

[Hoppy]

Hi there--thanks for your input...That's exactly my dilemma--Stingray seems marginal while Planted + seems like too much light. That's good info about the 24/7 though...I didn't know about that. I'll give the current setup a tad more time. Maybe someone else will chime in on the thread about the 18 inch high issue...someone else probably has tried the Stingray at some point with a higher tank...but maybe not!

To be useful, someone else's experience would have to be with the 30 inch Stingray. That type of light fixture gives you more PAR the longer it is, at least up to 48 inches long. And, that length effect is very significant. For the FugeRay version, a 36 inch long light gives about 50% more PAR at 18 inches than a 30 inch long light! That is a lot bigger effect than I would have guessed.