What Light should I get?

[Shrimpee]

So I have been researching aquarium lights and I have mainly 2 lights that I think would be best for a high tech 20 gal with high light plants and the 2 lights are the new Aquarium Co-op light or the Fluval 3.0 light. Which one should I get or should I get a different one?

[Mmiller2001]

I would pass on those and go for a high contrast light. A Chihiros wrgb 2 or Chihiros wrbg2 pro (kind of over kill in the pro model). Twinstar S series or ONF Flat one. 

The problem with the lights you listed are the diodes they use. Any light using white diodes versus RGB diodes to produce white light are high in the yellow spectrum. There are others but price really ramps up after the ones I mentioned. 

For a budget light, the Finnix planted plus has true 660nm reds and looks semi better. Poor controller function though on the finnex.

[Scapexghost]

I think the coop light us cheaper so id go that. I think the fluval is brighter but on that size tank it shouldnt matter. Neither youd run at 100%

[Pepere]

On 4/15/2023 at 12:08 AM, Mmiller2001 said:

For a budget light, the Finnix planted plus has true 660nm reds and looks semi better. Poor controller function though on the finnex

Specifically the Finnex Planted plus ALC has the 660 nm reds and hads PAR very close to the Fluval 3.0.  

I have bought the Finnex  planted plus ALC, the Fluval 3.0 and the Chihiros wrgb2 pro for a 29 gallon tank at 30 inches long.

 

Finnex Planted Plus ALC, 30 inches long, $99.00

Fluval 3.0 24/inches long $184.00

Chihiros WRGB2 pro, 24 inches long $386.00

The pros and cons of each…

The Finnex is the lowest cost.  It does not have the water resistance of the other two nor the co op light. Splash from an airstone can cause problems for it if you dont have a glass lid between the light and the water.

The Finnex has the ability to change color rendering and intensity through the day, but has a 3 hour ramp from setting to setting..So, if you set it for the first setting at 9:00 AM, the light comes on very dim at 6:00 AM and reaches set intensity at 9:00 AM.  As such programming a siesta is problematic, and dialing in the right amount of light per day to minimize Algae growth is difficult…  the 90 day warranty is far from impressive or confidence building.

The Fluval has a wonderful ap to adjust light schedule and intensity throughout the day, is bright enough and has a good IP rating. The color tendering is incredibly dissapointing.  I am at a loss to understand why it has so much universal praise from so many respected sources.  The red channel is incredibly weak and at best might be described as pink. The Blue Channel can only be described as a weird blue.Green is only provided from the white spectrum lights.  There are three white Spectrum choices.  Cool white, pure white and warm white.  The number of bulbs per channel is not consistent and hence the relative  strength per channel is not the same.  The cool white is incredibly week similar to the dissapointing red channel. Ideally this channel should be much stringer giving you a whiter light.  The Pure White is more yellow than the cool White which has more blue in it.  It also is not nearly bright enough.  The Warm White is the true power for light intensity and is  quite yellow.  
 

I find it impossible to get this light intense enough without having a very yellow cast. The lack of W RGB diodes makes this light incredibly dissapointing for me personally. WRGB means 4 channels with White, Red, Green and Blue channels. Why Red, Green and Blue lights?  Our eyes, only have Red, Green, and Blue color receptors.  Oureyes can only sense those colors.  All other colors are perceived in our brain by proccessing the relative strengths of the red, green and blue that the eye senses.  White diodes provide overall intensity, Red Green and Blue  fine tunes the color rendering. 
 

In a planted Scenario, Red and Blue lights are the two channels the plant uses the most for plant growth.  Green light is used as well, but is largely reflected, hence making the plants l”look” green… and your planted tank would look very unappealing under just red and blue light… 

The Fluval not having a 30 inch long light means the edges of the tank are a bit dark.

Take the Fluval 3.0 lights IP67 water resistance rating and control AP and utilize the leds from the Finnex Planted Plus ALC and this would likely be my favorite light.

 

The Chihiros WRGB2 is a fairly expensive. It also has a blietooth app for setting color intensity and channels and time of changes.  The ap is incredibly glitchy compared to the Fluval Ap.  Going back to reset the intensity of a specified channel after setting it is an exercise in futility.  You in essence need to reset the whole schedule and start over again.  The other downside of the Chihiros is the depth of the light.  On my Wo gallon tank the  light was too deep to open my hinged glass lid and allow the lid to stay open.  I would have to pull the whole lid forward about an inch and then open it.  Incredibly annoying.  The Chihiros has the best color rendering of the three.  If it had the ease of setting channels that the Fluval ap had it would be my preferred light.

iIf the Finnex had a bluetooth ap utility of the Fluval along with the water resistance of it, it would be my budget choice at twice its price.  Its color rendering is not quite to the Chihiros, but is pretty darn good.

The Co ops lights lack of color channels to alter the color rendering takes it out of contention for me personally.  If the color rendering out of the box pleases you personally, then the light has a lot to recommend itself.  High water resistance, great warranty, and outstanding customer service…  I have never had a disappointing experience interacting with Aquarium Co ops Customer Service team.  I cant think of another single company I can say that about.  Bear in mind I used to be a quality coach at L.L.Bean  training Customer Service reps on their call handling too.  The Co ops staff has met gold star standard every time I have had an issue that needed to be resolved.  

Currently I have the Finnexes on my tank but have a set color rendering and intensity in a programmed slot and have them set to turn on and off with a Kasa wifi timer.  I also have the fluvals on top in the front to have light come on dim and gradually brighten a half hour before the Finnex lights and then turn off and also they come on before the finnexs turn off in order to ramp down after the finnex shuts off.    It is a less than optimum solution and only makes sense since I already own both lights…. I would like a better light….

 

Which light would I use if I could only pick one? I would opt for the Finnex if I could only have 1 light of the four mentioned lights.

 

Between the Fluval 3.0 and the Co op light, I would probably go with the co op light.  The led color rendering of the fluval light renders its ap far less valuable.  The lower cost of the Co op light and excellent customer service team would weigh heavily in favor of that light. The Co op light is more yellow than I care for personally, but I bet adding a cheap finnex stingray would raise the kelvin rating and help for my aesthetic preferences at least.  
 

And edited to add; any of the four lights would work fine for your needs, ie growing plants well in a high tech tank…. They are all good growing choices.  The plants dont so much care about aesthetics….

Edited April 15 by Pepere

[Pepere]

Here are two pictures of one of my tanks with light adjusted for best look.

one picture is illuminated by a Finnex ALC. and another one is illuminated by the Fluval 3.0.

Which of the two tanks looks better to your eye?

 

Tank with A light?

 

or B light?

 

 

or do you prefer this bonus photo?

[Pepere]

And same idea with a second 29 gallon display tank…

 

view A

 

view B

View C

[Mmiller2001]

I also have a comparison of the fluval 3.0 versus Chihiros. This was taken a while ago. Fluval 1st picture, Chihiros 2nd.

And here was the end result under the Chihiros.

 

[Shrimpee]

I think the Chihiros price is gonna exceed my budget so I might go for the Aquarium Co-op plus the finnex planted or the finnex stingray

On 4/15/2023 at 5:10 PM, Pepere said:

And same idea with a second 29 gallon display tank…

 

view A

 

view B

View C

I think View A and View C looks a lot more natural than View B 

On 4/15/2023 at 5:21 PM, Mmiller2001 said:

I also have a comparison of the fluval 3.0 versus Chihiros. This was taken a while ago. Fluval 1st picture, Chihiros 2nd.

And here was the end result under the Chihiros.

 

The Chihiros looks way better than the Fluval. If I had an unlimited budget I would definitely get the Chihiros.

Edited April 15 by Aquarium2343

[Mmiller2001]

Have a look at the Twinstar S series before committing. I almost got one. It was on sale for nearly the same price as a Fluval.

[Mmiller2001]

What's the length of the tank?

[Shrimpee]

On 4/15/2023 at 5:37 PM, Mmiller2001 said:

What's the length of the tank?

The tank is 30 inches long.

[Mmiller2001]

On 4/15/2023 at 3:38 PM, Aquarium2343 said:

The tank is 30 inches long.

For the lower cost and at 30 inches. The Finnix planted plus alc is what I would do. I would throw it on a timer because you can't adjust for an 8 hour schedule.

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/15/2023 at 2:21 PM, Mmiller2001 said:

I also have a comparison of the fluval 3.0 versus Chihiros. This was taken a while ago. Fluval 1st picture, Chihiros 2nd.

Do you still have the 3.0 somewhere or did you get rid of it?

[Mmiller2001]

I sold the 2 46 inch ones I had and selling a 36 inch I still have. Just been lazy to start the process.

I'm also going to sell my 36 inch Chihiros RGB 2 when I tear down the 40. I'm seriously contemplating going Kessels and selling the Chihiros 90. But apparently, the wife doesn't want to swallow that pill yet...yet...

Edited April 15 by Mmiller2001

[Pepere]

If you like the shimmer effect of light reflecting off surface agitation as well as the shimmer shadows on the bottom of the tank, the Finnex planted plus has that more pronounced than either the Chihiros or fluval.

[Mmiller2001]

On 4/15/2023 at 4:29 PM, Pepere said:

If you like the shimmer effect of light reflecting off surface agitation as well as the shimmer shadows on the bottom of the tank, the Finnex planted plus has that more pronounced than either the Chihiros or fluval.

The big issue is the 70 inches of length and I'm not aloud to put any more holes in the house 😆

[DaveO]

On 4/15/2023 at 5:32 PM, Mmiller2001 said:

The big issue is the 70 inches of length and I'm not aloud to put any more holes in the house 😆

But putting extra holes in the house is half the fun.

[Mmiller2001]

On 4/15/2023 at 4:58 PM, DaveO said:

But putting extra holes in the house is half the fun.

😁

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/15/2023 at 3:20 PM, Mmiller2001 said:

I sold the 2 46 inch ones I had and selling a 36 inch I still have. Just been lazy to start the process.

If you find it remotely interesting I can send you my light settings (trying to make it not yellow) and see what you think.  Like you mentioned, there's basically no way to "fix it" based on the way the spectrums are setup.

I posted the breakdown here for anyone who is interested:

I was able to find an old marketing thing on an EU ad for each LED channel with the spectrum of each individual LED. I went and verified the LEDs per channel to the light and adjusted some things on my end based on that.  It's a puzzle, but when I setup mine I tend to want to push red (which we both agree it doesn't do well) and try to balance out the spikes a little bit.

Once I can finalize things I'll try to post an update in the appropriate thread.  I don't have other lights to compare it to.  I have 3 lights and each light looks different.  One tank has a tinge of tannins which does give the tank a skew.  It is much easier to push red on that tank.  The substrate is a white/warm white sand.   On my main tank, the big light it's a very white/pure/cold white and the substrate is black.  On the other tank I have "the bad light" and white sand with red lava rock.  It skews more towards the pure white spectrum.  The aquasky lights are pushing much more of that fluval yellow spectrum that you indicate.  I didn't realize it until I started to try to tune my setups a bit better.

[Mmiller2001]

On 4/17/2023 at 3:10 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

If you find it remotely interesting I can send you my light settings (trying to make it not yellow) and see what you think.  Like you mentioned, there's basically no way to "fix it" based on the way the spectrums are setup.

I posted the breakdown here for anyone who is interested:

I was able to find an old marketing thing on an EU ad for each LED channel with the spectrum of each individual LED. I went and verified the LEDs per channel to the light and adjusted some things on my end based on that.  It's a puzzle, but when I setup mine I tend to want to push red (which we both agree it doesn't do well) and try to balance out the spikes a little bit.

Once I can finalize things I'll try to post an update in the appropriate thread.  I don't have other lights to compare it to.  I have 3 lights and each light looks different.  One tank has a tinge of tannins which does give the tank a skew.  It is much easier to push red on that tank.  The substrate is a white/warm white sand.   On my main tank, the big light it's a very white/pure/cold white and the substrate is black.  On the other tank I have "the bad light" and white sand with red lava rock.  It skews more towards the pure white spectrum.  The aquasky lights are pushing much more of that fluval yellow spectrum that you indicate.  I didn't realize it until I started to try to tune my setups a bit better.

I don't use it. It's just sitting in the box. I think I'm going to get Weak Aqua P series lights. For now, the Chihiros is working well for my plant selection. I did some digging and it seems the Kessel A360x lights have too much yellow still. And the Weak Aquas are cheaper than Chihiros and pack way more punch and color. Only negative is the fan cooling and worst app of any light. 

[rockfisher]

On 4/14/2023 at 10:43 PM, Aquarium2343 said:

So I have been researching aquarium lights and I have mainly 2 lights that I think would be best for a high tech 20 gal with high light plants and the 2 lights are the new Aquarium Co-op light or the Fluval 3.0 light. Which one should I get or should I get a different one?

Unless you planing on having  CO2 there is no need to go crazy with a light I have several types of lights and most work well. I like my co-op light but for basic plants I have a what used to be cheap Chinese lights Hager’s light and the work well.