The aquarium hobby can be expensive. Livestock and gear prices can be intimidating for many people. For new hobbyists, the most shocking cost is often lighting. Lighting is usually the most expensive component when setting up a reef aquarium. How much should you 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 helps to understand why we have lighting in our reef aquariums. Aquarium lighting can serve several purposes. The most obvious purpose is to let us see the fish and corals in our aquarium. Because of this, the light that displays 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 provide the cues that 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 provide the right intensity, spectrum, and coverage to support photosynthetic animals in 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. Nicer lights have stylish, attractive mounting hardware that hides cords and attaches easily 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 installation easy and look attractive on a wide variety of aquariums. We all have aquariums because we want something nice to look at, so how the lighting looks on the aquarium can be important.

In addition to how the light looks on the outside of the tank, it also matters how the lights look inside 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 as well, or the fluorescent 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 means that, instead of the light looking like one well-blended color, you see little dots of white, blue, and red. This can be visually distracting and detract from the aquarium's overall look. 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 to blend the color spectrum. 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, creating a very even, 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, the more attention has been paid to how it 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 my lights will last. LEDs are rated to last for over ten years of normal aquarium use. However, in our experience, the LEDs themselves rarely fail. Normally, the fans, power supply, or control board fail long before the LEDs do. 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 overheating damage, 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 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, compatibility, and app compatibility. If you have any of these issues, is there anyone you can call? The more expensive lights have US-based support from people who know 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 offer on/off control. More advanced lights will offer individual control of different LED colors, programmable 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 offer some of the best control options, including basic knobs, wired dimming control, Wi-Fi control, and third-party integration with Neptune Apex Controllers.

How well does the light grow corals?

Many lights can grow corals, but some features make a light better at it. 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 they need as they grow. Lastly, lights with the proper intensity help ensure corals receive an adequate amount of light. In general, buying a more powerful light and dimming it gives you plenty of room to increase the intensity if needed. A more powerful light, dimmed, will likely last longer because the internal components will run cooler and work less hard.

Jaron Hudson, Product Expert

Questions? [email protected], 480-491-5283