Frustrated About "Lite" Information

[Rozmere]

I'm still trying to figure out the lighting for my standard 10-gallon planted tank and I'm frustrated by the lack of information I can find. But I don't mean that I can't find information about what I need, but rather that the products don't clearly state their specifications.

I felt that the regular (non-aquarium) Feit grow light that I've been using (see pictures of box below) was not designed for an aquarium and I wasn't seeing any plant growth so something that was designed for an aquarium seemed like it might work better. After hearing suggestions here and reading things elsewhere I decided that the Hygger 957 - Size: 26W(18"-24") sounded like it might be good. It was only slightly OVER what I could afford without going hungry for the rest of the month so, of course, I bought it. However, once I set it up it was FAR dimmer than the Feit grow light I was already using even at full spectrum and 100% intensity, and unlike the grow light my plants stopped pearling with the Hygger. ☹️

So, fearing for my plants' health and considering that I needed to go on a diet anyway, I removed the Hygger and bought an additional Feit grow light today so that I now have two sitting directly on the glass lid of my tank. But I'm still very unsure if these will get my plants growing.

Now, I've heard over and over, "Well pretty much any light will grow your plants." and "You have to be patient and let the plants adapt." but the reason I'm getting discuraged is because I've had all of these plants about a month now and they didn't come off a truck from a seller that grew them outside of water, I picked them up from a near-by(ish) fish store where they've been growing out of control in their tanks for a while; my water parameters are fine; I have them planted in a good plant-supportive substrate; I've dosed the tank with Fluval Grow Plus a handful of times over the last month; there are root tabs in the soil; and some of these plants (like the water wisteria for one example) are known to be fast growers but they haven't even grown as little as an 8th of an inch this entire time. So, the "Any shop-light will do" idea is great to hear but doesn't seem to be working for me for some reason.

I've tried to contact Feit a couple of times now to see if they can provide better information about what the PAR of these lights would look like passing through 12" of water, so I can have an idea if this will work, but have yet to hear anything back from them.

I guess I'm wanting a little more investigative guidence from those of you who know a considerable amount about lights. All suggestions and questions are welcome. I've provided images of the information on the box for these lights. The Feit website also claims that these are 2400 Lumen, with a 6500 color temperature, and that they have a Lumen Effeciency of 75.0 (whatever that means). I run them at full spectrum (white, blue, red).

Note: The picture of my tank was taken after adding the second grow light and right after feeding time so some of the debis on the substrate are flakes that my snails and kuhlies will take care of before morning and some other specks are particles from a Wonder Shell.

[Ninjoma]

What temperature is the water? 

[Patrick_G]

Can you post your water parameters and how many hours per day you’re running your light? 

I think you’ll see some improvements using the Hygger light, my guess is that the grow light is a bit to bright. Try the Hygger for about 6 hours a day.
Give the Wisteria some time, it takes a while to convert to submerged growth. The emersed form leaves might die off but you’ll start seeing the thinner, submerged form leaves growing from the top of the plant. 
 

I’m seeing what looks like some black beard algae and some staghorn algae. The reverse respiration technique will help clear up most of that. There’s a thread on the forum with instructions on how to do the treatment. 
 

Edited May 8, 2023 by Patrick_G

[Rozmere]

On 5/7/2023 at 9:43 PM, Ninjoma said:

What temperature is the water? 

It generally stays between 75 and 80 degrees F 

[Rozmere]

On 5/7/2023 at 9:56 PM, Patrick_G said:

Can you post your water parameters and how many hours per day you’re running your light? 

I think you’ll see some improvements using the Hygger light, my guess is that the grow light is a bit to bright. Try the Hygger for about 6 hours a day.
Give the Wisteria some time, it takes a while to convert to submerged growth. The emersed form leaves might die off but you’ll start seeing the thinner, submerged form leaves growing from the top of the plant. 
 

I’m seeing what looks like some black beard algae and some staghorn algae. The reverse respiration technique will help clear up most of that. There’s a thread on the forum with instructions on how to do the treatment. 
 

Okay, I'll follow your lead, you have beautiful tanks so you obviously know what you're doing. I just switched the Hygger back onto the tank and programmed it to come on full spectrum and intensity at 12pm and off at 6pm, this will give me the best time to enjoy my fish and plants. However, I'm still not happy with how dim the light is. I'll also be patient with the plants, I was hoping to eventually put more demanding plants in and I would like to have lighting that was as nice as yours but I'll deal with what I have for now and I'll just chill out and wait to see what happens.

Where are you seeing the black beard algae and the staghorn, that's concerning. I'm not seeing that in person. I do have some leaf rot and a few strings of green algae that I wiped loose from my HOB return so that the snails could get to it easier to eat, maybe that's what you're seeing? I guess it's obvious that my phone camera is horrible. But I could just be missing what you're seeing, can you point it out? I do have more brown algae than I would like, my snails are doing their best to chew on it so I was sort of playing the waiting game on that, might need to adopt another snail to help them out.

Currently, my water parameters are Nitrate: ~25, Nitrite: 0, PH: 7.2, KH: 40 (this won't budge above 40-60 no matter what I do), GH: 140+ (this is actually a bit higher than unusual which is strange because water directly out of my faucet is 0 GH and 0 KH), I might do a small water change tomorrow.

I was running my lights for 8 hours but I did try them at 10 hours for two days because I thought the plants weren't getting enough. I went back to 8 hours because I saw an increase in algae.

I'll stop stressing over lights and plants for now and just observe. When do you think I should see "something" change?

[JoeQ]

Too much emphasis is put on lighting when it comes to plant growth. All lighting does is dictate how fast or slow your plants take up nutrients. If there isn't a proper balance of nutrients all that expensive light is going to do is grow expensive algea.

Your time would be better spent researching plant nutrition (which is the unsung hero when it comes to growth) rather than lighting specifications. Todays lights are so powerful, most of the time they need to be dimmed down (if you aren't running co2) rather than not being powerful enough.

[TOtrees]

Question for you: Are you fertilizing? I ask because most of the new growth I see is quite pale. 

I'd go back to your Hygger light, and start fertilizing once a week (assuming the answer above is no). There are a lot of aquarium ferts out there, but you can't beat the simplicity of ACO easy green. It also tops the market in value (except for DIY options), and broad applicability (works well in the most situations). 

I was puzzling over the Feit light you have. Would I be correct that each of the 3 buttons (white red blue) turns that color light on and off? No dimming? So your setting options are just red, just blue, just white, any two colors, or all 3 colors? These options correspond with the 3 lighting summary figures. Note that for any scenario that includes the blue light, the blue totally dominates in terms of power. And it's putting out around 100000 Kelvin (an order of magnitude higher than reef tanks 😬). Similar with the red light, ie it totally dominates when its on. The kelvin rating for the white only is right where you need it for aquarium plants, ie just under 6500). 

So if you use that light for an aquarium, use the white only. Anything else will be asking for huge algae issues. Otherwise, return it to non-aquarium use. 🙂