Reef Lighting: Why Spend More?

The aquarium hobby can be expensive. The prices of livestock and gear can be intimidating for many people. The most shocking to the new hobbyists is often the cost of lighting. Lighting is usually the most expensive component when setting up a reef aquarium. How much do you need to spend on lighting? What do you get with a more expensive light? Is it worth the extra money?

What does lighting do?
Before discussing what you get when you spend more on lighting, it is important to understand why we have lighting on our reef aquariums. Aquarium lighting can serve several purposes. The most obvious purpose is that it allows us to see the fish and corals in our aquarium. And because of this, the light displaying the fish and corals' colors inside the aquarium is important. Lighting will also give animals in the aquarium a sense of the daily and seasonal cycle. Animals behave differently at different times of day and in different seasons. In nature, spawning events happen at specific seasons of the year. Many animals will not exhibit natural behavior without a light cycle to give them the cues that would come from the sun and moon.

Most importantly, in a reef aquarium lighting provides nutrition to the photosynthetic animals inside the aquarium. This includes corals, clams, macroalgae, and some other animals such as particular sponges and nudibranchs. Reef aquarium lighting must offer the proper intensity, spectrum, and coverage to support photosynthetic animals inside the aquarium.

How does the lighting look?
The cheapest aquarium lights will look like plain black boxes attached to the aquarium with leftover material from an erector set. The nicer lights have stylish and attractive mounting hardware that hides cords and easily attaches to the tank. The most premium lights, such as those from Kessil, Ecotech Marine Radion, and Aqua Illumination (Prime/Hydra) have many mounting options such as rigid arms, rails, hanging hardware, flexible arms, and canopy mounts. These mounting options make sure the lighting is easy to mount and will look attractive on a wide variety of aquariums. We all have aquariums to look at them so how the lighting looks on the aquarium can be important.

In addition to how the light looks on the outside of the tank is how the lights look inside of the tank. The cheapest LED lights will have 2-3 LED colors glued to a flat piece of metal that looks like a license plate. This will work, but often the lack of different LED colors will not highlight the natural colors of the fish and corals the best, or highlight the florescent pigments within corals. In addition, the fact that the different colors of LED are spaced far apart will lead to what is known as “the disco effect”. This is where instead of the light looking like one well-blended color there are little dots of white, blue, and red. This can be visually distracting and detract from the overall look of the aquarium. With more expensive LED lights, you will see eight or more LED colors so you can specifically tune the lights to make the animals in your aquarium look their best. You will also see unique ways of blending the color spectrum together. Kessil uses a dense matrix to blend their LED colors and provide beautiful glitter lines that resemble rays of sunlight rippling on the bottom of a swimming pool. Ecotech uses a diffuser panel to blend the light into an even blanket of light that gives a very even and diffuse effect. Reefbrite uses a mirrored reflector on its XHO LEDs to create a look nearly identical to a fluorescent tube. In general, the more expensive the light is, the more attention has been made to how the light looks inside and outside the aquarium.

How long will the lighting last?
Given how expensive aquarium lighting can be, a common question we get asked is how long will my lights last. LEDs are rated to last for over ten years of normal aquarium use. However, our experience is that rarely are the LEDs themselves what go bad in a light. Normally, the fans, power supply, or control board go out far before the LEDs themselves go out. With more expensive LED lights, all of these components are improved. The LED boards are waterproofed and shielded for protection. The cooling system and heatsink are improved to prevent damage from overheating and higher quality power supplies are used. We have a Kessil LED light that has been running over an aquarium for over ten years. It is uncommon for low end light fixtures without attention to longevity to last this long.

Is there any support?
Modern LED lights are nearly all controlled by apps with Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. The internal components of the lights are far more complicated than the old fluorescent and halide lights that used to be common for reef aquariums. This has made repairing lights nearly impossible for the end user, and there will inevitably be issues with network connectivity and compatibility as well as app compatibility. If you have any of these issues, is there anyone you can call? The more expensive lights will have US-based support from people who know all about the light and are happy to help. This is not the case with cheaply made lights which often have no support.

Can you control the lighting? If so how?
The most basic lights simply offer on/off control. More advanced lights will offer individual control of different LED colors, programable dimming, and color changes throughout the day, moon cycles that replicate the phases of the moon, and third-party integrations with other aquarium devices. Kessil LEDs have some of the best control options, with basic knobs as an option, wired dimming control options, Wi-Fi control options, and third-party integration with Neptune Apex Controllers.

How well does the light grow corals?
There are many lights that can grow corals, but there are some things that can make a light better at growing corals. Higher-end LED lights have a more diverse spectrum which promotes better coral growth and better development of coral color pigmentation. Higher-end lights have better diffusers to increase spread and reduce shadowing, which can help large branching corals get the light that they need as they grow larger. Lastly, having lights with the proper intensity will help to make sure that an adequate amount of light is supplied to the corals. In general, purchasing a more powerful light and adjusting it down will mean you have plenty of room to increase the intensity if needed. A more powerful light dimmed will likely last longer as the internal components will run cooler and not work as hard.

Jaron Hudson, Product Expert
Questions? [email protected], 480-491-5283