what kind of lighting should I use?

I’ve had a 35 gallon saltwater tank for a while now and was just given a 55 gallon tank, the only problem is that the lights suck up a TON of electricity. I know there’s different kinds of lighting available but I want to know if I can use LED lighting? I have tons of LEDs and can run 100′s of them off one 3volt power supply so it is obviously more efficient the the stock 300W ones. My question is; do fish and plants need certain rays of light that florescent or halide lights put off that my fish need?

Fish don’t really need specific lighting, but they look better in full spectrum (and they’d be happier too, I imagine). Some sensitive fish might be traumatized by anything and refuse to breed if the lighting’s wrong, but in general, I wouldn’t worry about it unless you’re breeding fish.

Plants, however, need very specific wavelengths – 3 of them. One is in the blue, one in the red, and the third one… I forget. So if you want to raise plants, yes, you need specific wavelengths (you may wish to look up chlorophyll wavelengths in nanometers and match them to a bulb – marine tanks need different spectra than freshwater). These can be met by LEDs but only if you have the right frequency! Which you probably don’t.

So – if you want to raise plants, you may want something like 4 watts per gallon of fluorescent light output, or 220W for your tank. If you want only fish, about 70W of fluorescent light (2 4-foot tubes, T8 or T12 are cheapest) is plenty. LEDs are not recommended. They are not more energy efficient than modern fluorescents, and their spectral output is inferior unless you mix lots of different colors of LEDs together.

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