Long gone are the days of fluorescent lamps illuminating our aquariums. Slowly but surely, LED lights are taking over the task of making things brighter, quite literally, for our fish and their tanks. Today, we will discuss the top 4 coolest LED tank lights.
Before anything else, first, let’s answer the question “Why use LED?”. According to an article by Stouch Lighting, LED beats Fluorescent or CFL lights in almost every category they provided. In a nutshell, LED is more energy efficient, lives longer, more durable and more affordable in the long run than almost any other light source used in the hobby.
Lighting our aquariums both enhances our pet’s colors and lets us appreciate them even more. Furthermore, a fish, may only be able to take in some nutrients from such light sources when they are kept indoors and away from direct sunlight. More often than not, especially in salt water tanks, we emulate the lighting conditions in the wild to satisfy our fish, or any other living organism’s needs.
In picking the absolute best LED for our tank, we selected 4 categories where the products must thrive in as proving grounds to be worthy to be amongst the best LED aquarium lights. The categories are as follows;
- Technology
- Durability
- Lighting Capacity
- Lifespan
Technology
When it comes to Technology, surprisingly, LED aquarium lights have gone a long way. There are a lot of products which offer numerous functions that suits various needs and quirks of fish keepers. For example, there are some that can be set to mimic sunlight as it goes from dusk to dawn while there are some with an extremely wide range of colors available and customizable.
This is an essential characteristic to find the best LED aquarium light because this sets apart those ones which simply light one’s fish tank as opposed to those that provide a wide array of settings which could cater different preferences for different people and different tank set ups.
Durability
Durability in almost any product conceivable is also of paramount importance upon its value. Nobody wants a product that does not last long. A broken product, often times, could not do a job it’s designed to do properly, or worse, could be hazardous to use. Moreover, since electronics and water don’t mix well, considering that an aquarium light is most likely to get wet a lot, it has to be durable enough to withstand such conditions as it is innate in the nature of the hobby.
Lighting Capacity
To be able to narrow down our search, a LED aquarium light’s capacity to illuminate must also be considered. If a LED light’s capacity to illuminate is low, it will not serve it’s purpose as well as ones with a higher capacity can. There are products that could illuminate a standard 50-gallon tank brighter and more efficient than others. Hence, we would only include those which could illuminate our tanks better.
Lifespan
Generally, the lifespan of a LED bulb lasts longer than almost any other light source available for our tanks, there are still difference between the types of bulb uses and their lifespan. Changing aquarium lights often due to breakage or wear and tear could be stressful to both fish and fish keepers. Thus, we will only include those which have a considerable longer lifespan than others.
The top 4:
Current USA Satellite Freshwater LED Plus Light Aquarium
With it’s sleek, lightweight and easy to install design, this LED aquarium light is one of the best to ever hit our market. It boasts of a 6,500K ultra bright illumination that is ready to light up any aquarium.
The Current USA Satellite LED Plus is also very durable as it is rated as an IP65 water resistant beast! Lastly, it’s controlled by a remote that could give your various light settings ranging from dusk, noon, dawn, rain and night mode just to name a few. It could be set to operate automatically in various customizable settings at any time of the day.
For it’s value, the Current USA Satellite Freshwater LED Plus is very tough to match as it provides top-notch function at a very affordable price.
Koval 156 Led Aquarium Light
This model is makes our list of the best LED lights available due to it’s durability and simplistic design. It is probably the most plug-and-play model available in the market today. It has 156 LED bulbs that are individually wired so that if one or more bulbs malfunctions, the others remain working.
Furthermore, the Koval 156 Led Aquarium Light also provides a full spectrum light that can make your fish and plants pop out. It is also very energy efficient as it’s equipped with technology that allows this model to emit strong light even at low power.
Lastly, when it comes to lifespan, this model takes the cake as it is designed to work for more than 50,000 hours. That’s more than 5 and a half years of continuous operation!
Finnex Planted+ 24/7
The Finnex Planted+ 24/7 is another awesome aquarium LED light because of it’s fully customizable light cycle feature. This feature allows the user to fully customize a schedule of lighting intensity and variety for 24 hours. Moreover, the you may also opt to use different groups of lights to to work together on specific times. This LED aquarium light is also designed to support both plant and animal life with over 7000K od illumination.
Probably it’s most impressive function is how the Finnex Planted+ aquarium light can operate even under water. Due to this ingenious design, it could well be one of the most durable aquarium lights available in the market today. It even has a waterproof IR remote receiver so controlling it from underwater would be possible.
AquaIllumination Prime
Don’t let it’s small yet slick design fool you. The Aquaillumination Prime sure packs a punch! Although relatively new in the market, it already won over the hearts of a lot of seasoned and popular fish keepers around the world.
This aquarium light is really small and portable and very easy to install. It may be installed on a bracket, their very own flex kit (flexible stand), or even hanged from the top of your tank. Although it’s small in size, each unit it’s extremely powerful. This is because of it’s breakthrough HD Power technology where it could transfer energy from bulbs individually selected by the keeper to others which will then illuminate the tank. Like others, it has a full spectrum of light while using the most advance LED technology available. It is also equipped with an 80-degree optic lenses that keeps the power and intensity of the LED bulbs balanced throughout the tank.
If that’s not impressive enough, the AquaIllumination Prime, may be remotely controlled on your smartphones. Yes! From your smartphone! It has almost all the features all other LED aquarium light has and are extremely customizable from the amount of power to the intensity of light produced. It may also be set to operate at different preferred settings throughout the day. All that and the comfort of just a push of a button on your smartphone. Need I say more?