Vivarium lighting - L.E.D.

Has anyone used L.E.D. lighting in their tanks? Will it work well with mosses? plants?

Yes, I have and do.

Consumer grade White LED does not support plant growth (as they are not truly full spectrum white light! most are actually blue....)

I only use LED in tanks that have no live plants, or contain species that require an easily controlled day/night lighting schedule. (This is because most aquarium rated fluorescents' ballasts are not rated for timer/dimmer control resulting in shortened unit life and a fire hazard.

Temperate and tropical mosses generally do well with ambient lighting. This is true of most temperate ferns. I have gotten out of the habit of using tropical plants in my vivaria, as their requirements are usually very different from the requirements for caudate keeping.

Please use the search for LED in product reviews here on Caudata.org for a detailed breakdown of what I use, including pictures.

Consumer grade White LED does not support plant growth (as they are not truly full spectrum white light! most are actually blue....)

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That's definetely a myth. I read a big thread on planted aquarium forum (polish) about that and saw many planted tanks running on LED light. Sadly i can't translate the posts from there, but i'm sure you can google some posts about that in english, on Aquatic Plant Central, or somewhere.

I tried to translate this, not sure if you can understand it...

LED parameters aren't awesome, only if we describe them by lumens, because they give more light in blue spectrum, for which our eyes are barely sensitive, and lumens are measured in green spectrum.
If we describe them in PAR, photosynthetic active spectrum (?), it will show that they're way more useful for plants, despite small brightness detected by our eye.

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It may sound kinda weird but then all the shame is on my english ability.

i'm an electrician by trade, and i have several LED undercabinet lights left over from a job i did, I'm familiar with the "blueish" LED lights, but these are high end, architectural grade and give off a white light, and are dimmable. living in kansas we don't have alot of moss growing around, (too hot and dry in summer) so i can't go out and judge for myself it's growing conditions. any idea on minimum wattage to keep moss healthy? thanks

LEDs have appeal because they are energy efficient, and because they can be configured to deliver light without delivering a lot of heat. But do they have the right kind of light to keep plants healthy?


Photosynthesis uses several pigments to capture light. Chlorophyll A captures blue light at around the 400 to 450 nm wave length and red light at around the 650 to 700 nm wave length. Chlorophyll B captures blue light at around the 450 to 500 nm wavelength, and red light peaking at about 650 nm. Carotenoids such as the pigment that makes carrots orange capture mostly blue light. Green light is not used – it is reflected – so most plants appear green. Wikipedia (Photosynthetically active radiation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) and many biology texts have a decent explanation of this. Here are a couple graphs from the Wikipedia source:





[FONT=&quot]Unlike incandescent or fluorescent lights, LEDs typically emit light in a narrow wavelength band. There are many kinds of LEDs, so the problem becomes one of finding an LED emitting light in a wavelength useable by photosynthesis. Blue and red LEDs would typically be in the zone (see table at: Light-emitting diode - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). White LEDs are more complicated as white light is a combination of wavelengths. It is achieved in LEDs either by combining 3 LEDs producing the primary colors of light,

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[FONT=&quot]or by using an LED to activate a phosphor which produces mixed wavelength white light.

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The blue and red component s of the former in the example shown are mostly in the zone, and a portion of the bandwidth of the example shown of latter type is also appropriate. (See the section at the above link that relates to white light.) There are commercial products (such as: LED Grow Light ) (which I have not tried) that purport to work well for plants. Several of these look like they need to be used in combination with a white light source to achieve a visually pleasing setup. I would be interested to hear about the experience of others on this.


-Steve Morse

Yahilles said:

That's definetely a myth. I read a big thread on planted aquarium forum (polish) about that and saw many planted tanks running on LED light. Sadly i can't translate the posts from there, but i'm sure you can google some posts about that in english, on Aquatic Plant Central, or somewhere.

I tried to translate this, not sure if you can understand it...

It may sound kinda weird but then all the shame is on my english ability.

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I speak from personal experience. Last year I converted my entire critter room (actually, entire house) to LED. The results were disastrous for most every plant in the house, save the "java moss". Even my ultra-hardy, locally collected temperate mosses quickly succumbed to improper lighting. I have since hybridized, being forced to fall back to using plant and aquarium spectrum fluorescents for my live planted vivaria and orchids. (even the pothos died!)

Believe me when I say, this was upsetting. LED racks are not cheap, even when you build them yourself from raw components as I did.

As Steve explained so well, its a matter of spectrum. Even most of the expensive, tech grade LEDs are actually in the blue end of the spectrum. There are no public-available full spectrum white LED lamp sets available to the consumer.

Back in my defense contractor days, we played with LED technology for certain systems for the same reason many consumers do now- low power consumption, durability and longevity. A certain system required white light (sorry, thats all I can say) and we found that even prototype grade "white" LEDs were not suitable. Far to deep into the blue end.

While I fully believe that recent advances with various polymers will provide us with LED tech that will support plants in the near future, it is still a few years off. I actually remember when "they" said UV LEDs were an impossibility...

Then how on earth would that be possible for aquarists to set up heavily planted tanks on LED? You can't just say there aren't any suitable for plants. I already linked this topic to my planted aquarium forum, we'll see what will be the answer.

well the L.E.D lights seem to be working well. plants and mosses are thriving. i guess i'll be ready to get some newts in there soon. thanks for the advice.