Understanding
and its use for reef aquariums
LED lighting technology for the marine aquarium hobby is constantly being updated and
improved. In this article, Professor Joshi explains how LEDs function, assesses their suit-ability for coral-reef aquaria, and discusses the criteria for selecting an LED aquarium light.
LEDs (light emitting diodes) are an exciting new tech-
nology that has the potential to change the way we light
our aquariums. There is considerable interest in LEDs
due to a large number of potential advantages: reduced
power consumption, extremely long life (which could
eliminate changing of bulbs), reduced heat input to the
aquarium, selective dimming to simulate dawn/dusk/
tropical cloud cover, wide range of effective color tem-
peratures to satisfy aquarist preferences, and more aes-
thetically pleasing displays that combine spotlights and
uniform lighting.
