Northstar24
The Tang Herder
Please dont think we are trying to badger you. All of us here want to see you succeed. Remember that fish stores exist to make money, they don't always have your interests (or the fish's) in mind
You can ALWAYS come here to ask questions and verify the information that your fish store is giving you. I would also research fish you are interested in ahead of time, so that you have some idea about what their requirements are.
Welcome to the site, hopefully you'll find it useful
Now - on to LED's. There are no 'hoods' per say, but PAR38's screw into a normal light socket, so with a little bit of creativity you could easily come up with some sort of canopy for your tank that would hide the lights
Marineland does make a reef capable LED fixture that several people have had some success with, but in deeper tanks I do not personally feel it is a viable option. Personally, if I were setting up one of these smaller nano tanks I think I would go with the PAR38 bulbs. If you are electronically inclined there are also several places that sell DIY kits, which lets you build the fixture with whatever colors you want. But again, you would need to come up with some sort of canopy if you want to hide the lights
As far as specs of LED's go, you basically have a few things to consider. The first is the color of the LED's. Most fixtures have either warm or cool white LED's (you really want the warm white, they are better looking to most people than the cool whites), as well as blue, and royal blue LED's. Some of the more advanced fixtures have started incorporating greens, reds, cyans, UV, and others to try and fix a perceived issue with coral coloration
The next thing to look at is watts. You cannot compare watts of LED directly to MH or T5, as LED's create far more usable light for coral than traditional lighting per watt. For an example, I replaced 1000 Watts of MH and T5 with 225 Watts of LED, and I can really only run those 225 Watts at about 65% or I start melting things. In general, most fixtures will use 3 Watt LED's - usually Cree's, Lexueons, or Bridgelux LED's. There are also less expensive fixtures (or fixtures meant for shallower tanks) that use 1 Watt LED's as well
Along with wattage, LED's can be run with optics or without. Optics serve as a means to focus the light output of an LED (similar to a reflector for traditional llight) Optics are rated in degrees, the lower the degrees, the narrower the light is focused. The wider the degrees, the better spread you will get from the LED (and likely the higher you will need to mount the LEDs to get the light coverage to look 'right)
As I already stated, I would look at PAR38 bulbs, or the AI Sol NANO for a 20 gallon tank
You can ALWAYS come here to ask questions and verify the information that your fish store is giving you. I would also research fish you are interested in ahead of time, so that you have some idea about what their requirements are.
Welcome to the site, hopefully you'll find it useful
Now - on to LED's. There are no 'hoods' per say, but PAR38's screw into a normal light socket, so with a little bit of creativity you could easily come up with some sort of canopy for your tank that would hide the lights
Marineland does make a reef capable LED fixture that several people have had some success with, but in deeper tanks I do not personally feel it is a viable option. Personally, if I were setting up one of these smaller nano tanks I think I would go with the PAR38 bulbs. If you are electronically inclined there are also several places that sell DIY kits, which lets you build the fixture with whatever colors you want. But again, you would need to come up with some sort of canopy if you want to hide the lights
As far as specs of LED's go, you basically have a few things to consider. The first is the color of the LED's. Most fixtures have either warm or cool white LED's (you really want the warm white, they are better looking to most people than the cool whites), as well as blue, and royal blue LED's. Some of the more advanced fixtures have started incorporating greens, reds, cyans, UV, and others to try and fix a perceived issue with coral coloration
The next thing to look at is watts. You cannot compare watts of LED directly to MH or T5, as LED's create far more usable light for coral than traditional lighting per watt. For an example, I replaced 1000 Watts of MH and T5 with 225 Watts of LED, and I can really only run those 225 Watts at about 65% or I start melting things. In general, most fixtures will use 3 Watt LED's - usually Cree's, Lexueons, or Bridgelux LED's. There are also less expensive fixtures (or fixtures meant for shallower tanks) that use 1 Watt LED's as well
Along with wattage, LED's can be run with optics or without. Optics serve as a means to focus the light output of an LED (similar to a reflector for traditional llight) Optics are rated in degrees, the lower the degrees, the narrower the light is focused. The wider the degrees, the better spread you will get from the LED (and likely the higher you will need to mount the LEDs to get the light coverage to look 'right)
As I already stated, I would look at PAR38 bulbs, or the AI Sol NANO for a 20 gallon tank
