Plant Lighting for a 5 gallon?

Doing a planted tank, need some help deciding good lighting. I was thinking of just going along the route of clip on lamp with daylight LED but at the same time there must be a smaller option right? My tank is 5gal.
Are there any kind of LED strips that are good for plant lighting? The stick on ones. Not the huge bar type ones that you sit above the aquarium. I was thinking of just tacking them to the lid since there's a bit of space between them and the water.

 

Need more details! What kind of plants? Is this for high-demand plants that need injected CO2 and fertilizers? What kind of substrate?

If you're just going with low-demand plants like Java Fern, Anubias and Crypts, etc then just about any daylight/full spectrum/6500K+ bulb should do. Heck, even a cool white is probably enough for those!

You want to be careful sticking just any kind of LED inside the hood because it's extremely humid in there and you will get a short which can be dangerous. Been there...

 

Need more details! What kind of plants? Is this for high-demand plants that need injected CO2 and fertilizers? What kind of substrate?

If you're just going with low-demand plants like Java Fern, Anubias and Crypts, etc then just about any daylight/full spectrum/6500K+ bulb should do. Heck, even a cool white is probably enough for those!

You want to be careful sticking just any kind of LED inside the hood because it's extremely humid in there and you will get a short which can be dangerous. Been there...

Oh yikes I've forgotten the names, they are all low light plants though. At least that's what their tags said. They're also apparently easy care. I'm just using liquid fertiliser but I wanna get some nice lighting so they can actually grow better. The Fluval ChI lighting is meh and focuses only on one spot in the tank. I'll probably buy some co2 along the way but for now I'll be ok.


Alright so I'll skip the strips then haha. I'd rather not die. Could you maybe link me to some bulbs you'd recommend? I'm in the UK, but it shouldn't matter too much. Just need a rough idea of what to look for.

Edit: Forgot to add that I'm just using sand. I'm on a budget so I couldn't get like, soil or anything.

 

Firstly no matter what type plants forget leds and t5s.

SHO CFLs are the best lights for growing plants. Coincidentally they're the cheapest. My local hardware store sells a 4 pack for 12 $. You can mix and max spectrums to accent your fish, they fit into any screw in socket, extremely highly customizable, they cost less overall to operate as well as purchase, superior PAR/PUR over LEDs and t5s

My extremely expensive high output leds and t5 setups I purchased f or my planted aquariums are now wasted on aquariums without plants. I'll never purchase another light. It's not just the price but I've seen a very significant and dramatic change since using them, I wish I knew about them sooner. They make my plants pearl way more than my 500 $ LEDs ever have. My dwarf baby tears went mad when I switched I was able to carpet a roughly 28x16" area with a 3x3" square in a little over a month

 

Don't worry about the sand, that's what I use because it's cheap and it looks good. I've also had no trouble growing plants with a little fertilizer added. Even if you get the best substrate it's going to run out of nutrients eventually in a closed system.

Firstly no matter what type plants forget leds and t5s.

SHO CFLs are the best lights for growing plants. Coincidentally they're the cheapest. My local hardware store sells a 4 pack for 12 $. You can mix and max spectrums to accent your fish, they fit into any screw in socket, extremely highly customizable, they cost less overall to operate as well as purchase, superior PAR/PUR over LEDs and t5s

Nonsense. They can all work, you've just got to do your homework and pick the one with the right colour temperature for the plants you have. Not all CFL's will work, neither will all of the LED's. I've had great success with cheap cool white LED bulbs from eBay!

BTW don't add the full dose of fertilizer at first. Better to work up to it so you can see how much your plants actually need. Everything in moderation, try to keep it in balance. Too much of anything and you'll have algae or growth problems or something

 

Don't worry about the sand, that's what I use because it's cheap and it looks good. I've also had no trouble growing plants with a little fertilizer added. Even if you get the best substrate it's going to run out of nutrients eventually in a closed system.



Nonsense. They can all work, you've just got to do your homework and pick the one with the right colour temperature for the plants you have. Not all CFL's will work, neither will all of the LED's. I've had great success with cheap cool white LED bulbs from eBay!

BTW don't add the full dose of fertilizer at first. Better to work up to it so you can see how much your plants actually need. Everything in moderation, try to keep it in balance. Too much of anything and you'll have algae or growth problems or something

I've done my homework and have very expensive ho leds, super high output cfls are better hands down, leds cannot match the par/pur. There's a reason why most serious aquaponic growers have switched.

 

What kind of LED were you using? Different types have different intensities. I found that the SMD chips worked quite well for me but I'm sure the technology must have moved on by now.

 

I have several finnex, twinstar, and other sets. Twinstar being thr best of the bunch. SHO cfls are just simply better, they're just not popular in the hobby yet.

 

LED technology is changing so rapidly that just giving me a brand name tells me nothing. What kind of LEDs were they using at the time?

 

I second TinyTanganyika. Probably easiest to get a bulb of those and mount it on a desktop lamp. I am doing that for my planted 10 gal and I am getting good growth on all my plants. It is a 18 Watt Philips bulb with warm light (I heard plants absorb better warm light? either way, the tank looks way better with warm light) that supposedly throws out 1200 lumens.
There are some LEDs used for outdoors, they are more expensive than common ones but evaporation does nothing to them. Overall I think going with anything but a desktop lamp is just complicating things for no benefit in such a small tank.

 

Could I have some links so I'm not just kinda blindly searching through Amazon and stuff? I'm not too skilled with lighting specs yet so I'm not 100% sure what I'm looking for.

 

They are just your typical fluorescent bulb, the ones the goverment promotes because they are more energy efficient that old tungsten bulbs.

Most of them have their specs written on the bottom part. I have good growth with 1200 lumens on a 10 gal to give you an idea. I would probably get a 11 Watt bulb of those and see how it goes, it should be enough light but they are cheap so you can just buy a bigger one if you need it.

 

Finnex ray2, twinstar e series and ada aquaskys, as well as other less known brands none compare to my sho cfls

They are just your typical fluorescent bulb, the ones the goverment promotes because they are more energy efficient that old tungsten bulbs.

Most of them have their specs written on the bottom part. I have good growth with 1200 lumens on a 10 gal to give you an idea. I would probably get a 11 Watt bulb of those and see how it goes, it should be enough light but they are cheap so you can just buy a bigger one if you need it.

Not just your typical bulb there's a difference in SHO Cfls and regular typical cfls. Of course typical cfls aren't going to be amazing.

 

They are just your typical fluorescent bulb, the ones the goverment promotes because they are more energy efficient that old tungsten bulbs.

Most of them have their specs written on the bottom part. I have good growth with 1200 lumens on a 10 gal to give you an idea. I would probably get a 11 Watt bulb of those and see how it goes, it should be enough light but they are cheap so you can just buy a bigger one if you need it.

Okay so I looked around for CFL bulbs, do these specs look ok? Or too low?

 

Not just your typical bulb there's a difference in SHO Cfls and regular typical cfls. Of course typical cfls aren't going to be amazing.

Ooops, you are right. Supposedly SHO give 70 lumens per watt and when I do the math on my house bulbs apparently most of them are SHO... my whole life has been a lie lol I thought they were just normal CFLS.

Okay so I looked around for CFL bulbs, do these specs look ok? Or too low? View attachment 314507

Half the lumens of my 10 gal, half the tank size. Of course it isn't so linear as depth matters a lot (surface does too tho) and I think the depth is the same for both tanks (in my case 30 cm).
But maybe the kelvins are too low? I don't know, I would personally try it out, but I'm not a light guru, I'm just talking based on my experience.

 

Ooops, you are right. Supposedly SHO give 70 lumens per watt and when I do the math on my house bulbs apparently most of them are SHO... my whole life has been a lie lol I thought they were just normal CFLS.

You have 12" sho cfls in your lighting fixtures around the house? Seems excessive unless you live in a green house

 

You have 12" sho cfls in your lighting fixtures around the house? Seems excessive unless you live in a green house

This is getting confusing. No, I don't have 12 inch bulbs hanging around my house, but all my lights perform roughly at what this site considers a SHO level, 70 lumens per watt. So what the heck are my lights? Just cfl or SHO? What exactly differentiates cfl from SHO cfl?

 

Lumens aren't important, that unit of measure applies to the spectrum visible to the human eye (green). Par/pur is the important part for plants. (Red/blues)

 

Doing a planted tank, need some help deciding good lighting. I was thinking of just going along the route of clip on lamp with daylight LED but at the same time there must be a smaller option right? My tank is 5gal.
Are there any kind of LED strips that are good for plant lighting? The stick on ones. Not the huge bar type ones that you sit above the aquarium. I was thinking of just tacking them to the lid since there's a bit of space between them and the water.

I have no experience with LED strips, but if this is your first planted tank I just have a small word of caution/advice. Make sure you do not overexpose your plants to the light. We had a bad experience where we left our high LED light on for too many hours of the day, thinking we were doing the tank good when in actuality we were causing the plants to photosynthesize for 12 hours a day, basically frying them and almost killing them. 8 hours a day is what is recommended for most planted tanks. I would also suggest getting Leaf Zone to help promote healthy plant life. Good luck.

 

I actually would not recommend leaf zone. It only has iron and potassium in it, plants need way more than that to grow (nitrogen, phosphate, magnesium, calcium, boron, etc)

 

You can get a big container (2 liters) of dry micro and macro fertz on amazon for the price of a small 500ml bottle of flourish/leaf zone

You mix your own and it lasts forever. I've been using the same bottle for almost a year and there's barely a dent in them

 

For my planted tank I have a 10watt led flood light that worjs great, its the white daylight.