SELECTING THE RIGHT LIGHTING FOR YOUR AQUARIUM

Equipping the aquarium with the right lighting system not only affects the aesthetic appeal of the aquarium, but also has a direct effect on all of its inhabitants. Some fish species like low light, while others prefer brightly lit aquariums. If you plan to have a planted aquarium, you should take care of powerful lighting to meet all the light needs of the plants. However, choosing a lighting system for an aquarium is not just about matching it to the physical size of the aquarium, but also about finding a balance in terms of power, intensity and emitted spectrum. Each freshwater aquarium has individual characteristics depending on the fish and plants it is intended to contain, so before you start installing lighting in your aquarium, you should do some basic research on the lighting requirements of all the inhabitants of your aquarium.
Intensity issues
When it comes to choosing the lighting intensity in your aquarium, there are two nuances you may encounter: the lighting may be too intense or it may be too dim. With intense lighting, you can run into the problem of algae infestation, where algae will evenly cover the glass, decorations, and plant leaves, which is generally a very bad thing. The brighter the lighting, the faster the algae will develop. There are several ways to solve this problem.
One option is to replace the light bulbs with less intense ones. If your aquarium is small, there is no need for a powerful lighting system.
Another option is to plant a large number of aquarium plants in the aquarium - these plants will become solitaires in the aquarium and even benefit from the bright lighting, while algae will be in a depressed state and significantly slow down their development.
In cases where the lighting in the aquarium is very poor, there is little that can be done other than replacing the lamps or completely modernizing the lighting system. Some types of lighting systems are originally designed for certain sizes of aquariums, so knowing the dimensions of your aquarium can easily purchase the right system.
It should also be taken into account that planted aquariums require more intensive lighting than fish-only aquariums. For very large or deep aquariums, especially those heavily planted with plants, it is recommended to use lighting systems with metal halide lamps, for all other cases standard or compact fluorescent lamps are sufficient.
Lumens per watt
In order to achieve the proper balance in aquarium lighting, you not only need to choose the right system, but you also need to install the proper bulbs. Aquarium lamps come in many shapes, sizes, and intensities, so it can be a challenge to choose the right one. A generally accepted rule of thumb is that the required lamp wattage should be 0.2-0.4 W/L in fish tanks and 0.6-1 W/L in planted tanks. This is a recommended rule of thumb, but all are not exactly an accurate calculation criterion when selecting lamps. A watt is a unit of power used to measure how much energy any light bulb consumes. Based on this information, you can see how the same wattage of different bulbs, such as incandescent, energy-saving, and LED bulbs, have different emissivity.
Lumens are used to measure the amount of visible light emitted by a lamp - this information is a much more accurate reflection of the performance of a particular lighting fixture. The higher the lumen value of the selected lamp type, the more intense the lighting will be. This information is especially important if you plan to keep a plant aquarium, as living plants, for their normal development, require lighting for 10-12 hours.
Calculation and selection of the necessary lighting for the aquarium may at first glance seem a difficult task, but if you have some basic knowledge of the substance of this issue, you will not have much trouble in selecting and installing the right lighting for your aquarium.