LED lighting will soon be at the forefront in regards to lighting fish aquariums.

LED Options:

The reasons why LED Aquarium lights are replacing fluorescent, incandescent and metal halides, is due to the fact that LED's offer a high range of flexibility and lower annual operation costs, making them one of the best options for lighting an aquarium in today’s aquarium hobby. LED lights offer a smaller footprint than fluorescent bulbs, and they offer a wider variety of light levels, installation methods, and placement options. Other benefits include, led lights run much cooler, keeping the temperate of your aquarium at a much cooler temperature. Often times hobbyists can completely eliminate cooling apparatus, such as chillers, after making the conversion to led lighting from metal halides or fluorescent lighting. Many fish equipment retailers sell LED lights for a variety of purposes, including: to add a moonlight effect which helps in recreating the dusk and dawn effect, as an add-on to your existing aquarium lighting, to place over refugiums, to place over a sump/ wet-dry filter, and there are even air diffusers/air stones with LED's in them that makes for a spectacular lighting display.

DIY LED Moonlights:

If you want more flexibility, and are handy when comes to "do it yourself" projects, than it is possible to create your own DIY LED light for your fish tank. Below we will briefly describe a method to make your own LED Moonlighting. Before attempting to do this, make sure to further educate yourself with the task at hand. To start you will need blue LED bulbs, (we prefer the CREE bulbs) and a soldering iron that is 15 to 30 watts. Keep in mind that by using a stronger soldering iron, it may cause bulbs to burn out. Other materials that you need include: heavy gauge resistor wire, wire cutters, heavy gauge speaker wire and an existing light canopy/hood. The resistor wire will be soldered to the longest wire coming out of the LED bulbs. The other end of the wire will be soldered to the speaker wire, which is split into positive and negative wires and attached to the power connector on the light hood. It is best to make a diagram of the light system to avoid shorting out the bulbs or shocking yourself on the wires. If you are not comfortable with electrical work, do not attempt this project.

Proper Lighting Levels:

LED's can be used for many tasks and purposes for lighting many types of aquaria, including: freshwater planted aquariums (for lush plant growth), coral reef aquariums (for lush coral growth) and for fish only fish tanks. It is important to note the different wattages the LED bulbs come in, because not having enough light intensity can actually be damaging to aquarium plants and fish, by not providing sufficient light levels. An idea range for night lighting is 470 to 480 nanometers. Day lighting should be somewhere around 2 to 4 watts per gallon of water in the tank. For aquariums 48 inches in depth, good PAR levels should be over 200. For keeping hard corals in reef aquariums, you would want a greater PAR level, preferably 260 or higher.

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Read more: http://www.ocreef.com/ocreef_xp-e_and_reg_60_watt_cree_and_trade_led_aquarium_light_with_3_watt_high_intensity_leds