# LED Lighting; 10,000K vs. 6500K



## Frog Town (Oct 8, 2013)

I've read on this forum where people are using these LED light fixtures and have given links to one particular company.

LED Aquarium Lighting

In terms of plants growth and health, what would be the better LED fixture?


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## leakfrog (Sep 2, 2014)

Frog Town said:


> I've read on this forum where people are using these LED light fixtures and have given links to one particular company.
> 
> LED Aquarium Lighting
> 
> In terms of plants growth and health, what would be the better LED fixture?


I'd go for the 10,000k...


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## redfrogger (Nov 6, 2010)

IMO vivarium plants do well with 6500K. 10000K will be too high, which would be better for aquariums. Also with 10000k the color produced may not be desirable and cause the frogs to have different colors than expected.


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## hydrophyte (Jun 5, 2009)

Plants can grow very well under 10,000K lamps, but the color rendering is not very good. Browns and other warm colors in particular look gray under 10,000K.


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## Frog Town (Oct 8, 2013)

Thank you for your responses. It's given me something to think about.

T5 lighting is the only type of lighting I haven't used. Plants like Pothos, Philos, Ficus, Pepperomia, Pelonia all seem to do well with regular daylight fluorescent bulbs. Bromeliads do well wih 6500K CFL but they seem to need being close to the light source. Same with the Ficus repens. I do have 2 13 watt LED bulbs and they generate very little heat, but the color is a little weird to me. I haven't used them long term or exclusively so I can't say how well they work.

Hydrophyte - Are you the one that several years ago had those manzanita centerpieces for sale, the ones designed for an exo terra? Do you still make those? I may be confusing you with Epiphyte.


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## Frogtofall (Feb 16, 2006)

As an experiment I mixed 5000K and 3000K bulbs over my 100 gal Exo. Looks VERY natural, almost like sun light. I wish it would come through in photos like it looks in person.


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## Pubfiction (Feb 3, 2013)

The K rating of a bulb matters not for how effective it is in its self. Doesn't matter if you hit a plant with 3000k or 10000k if it has the right amount of PAR its going to grow well. If it has too little it will not, if it has too much it will burn. So ultimately the only way it matters is if you can make the argument that for some reason due to physics / chemistry a certain rating is more efficient. But do you care about that really? If you really want efficiency you could switch to blue / red only lights. 

Most consumer LEDs are made by taking a blue LED and then doping a phosphor coating on the top. Blue light goes up, hits the phosphor coating and excites it releasing largely white light. The higher the color temperature the more blue is allowed to go through in this case and the more efficient the light. So speaking from a pure efficiency standpoint a 10000k LED will give you slightly better growth ALL things kept exactly equal as it wont be wasting energy to trying to convert blue to other colors via excitation of the phosphors and plants can use the blue light. But its rarely that simple in consumer LEDs. 
Ultimately we care more about color than just plant growth and for consumer class LEDs they tend to look washed out and almost too bright to our eyes when the efficiency is highest and price lowest =]. 

So will you be happy with a washed out color look if you buy the 10000k lights? I have seen other cheap LEDs like these in 7000k and they still look pretty washed out. I would stick with 7000k if you were going to go with these ones in the OP. I think the 10000k will not satisfy you.


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## IPx (May 23, 2014)

I have three 6500k LED light arrays left over from my aquarium days that I am currently using on my 20gal and 15gal vivs. My plants are growing quite nicely under this type of lightning so I think in your case OP, the 6500k is more than enough to keep your plants green and happy.
The model I'm using is the Marineland dual bright LEDs. Obviously you know that the power savings and amount of heat (near none) is better than using T5's


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