FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

When I learned about lighting for planted tanks everyone said 65k Is the best. Now on this forum I hear otherwise. So now I'm on the hunt for a light and found two LED lights. One is 4000k the other is 5000K. Are either of these any good?

******EDIT: If those are your options get the brightest 5000k u can get!********



Yes and no, here’s a picture that shows the average difference of led lighting when it comes to unfiltered 2700k-5000k spectrums!

Blue spectrums = better plant growth! Like stems and leafs (450nm - 495nm)

Red spectrums = better flower/fruit/seed/root growth (620nm - 780nm)


But also take into account that you will need to get the highest lumen output you can since most go off lumens and not the par. So hopefully you’ll get better par with more lumens! Unless it’s specifically made for growing which case they usually tell you the par rating! (Photosynthetically active radiation = particles of light the plant can use for photosynthesis)



*take this with a grain of salt! By no means I can say that this picture is 100% correct due to the wide range of led diodes, manufacturers, and the opaque plastic casings that a lot of them use(that can filter out useful spectrums), ect!



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Honestly the best success I've had is with a mix of 3500k and 6500k. I don't really get the whole "blue for vegetative" and "red for bloom" thing.

Benurmanii wrote:Honestly the best success I've had is with a mix of 3500k and 6500k. I don't really get the whole "blue for vegetative" and "red for bloom" thing.

I took the op’s question as he could only choose one of the lights he showed above so I suggested the one with more blue in it!

When growing with artificial light u want as much blue and red as u can get to simulate the sun for a “overall” better growth for plants, and technically by mixing 3500k and 6500k your doing just that! :3 but if u only can have one light more blue is the one you should choose.

The 3500k has more red spectrum and the 6500k has more blue spectrum!

I was just trying to show with that example when plants are not flowering or producing seeds or fruits they tend to use more blue spectrum overall! But still use red for things like root growth.


Here’s a led light bulb I just bought for my single vft! It primarily produces most of the spectrums plants use!





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To tell you the truth I would rather use a variety of colored bulbs. when I was doing planted tanks I had a 4 bulb T5HO with 2x65K, actinic and a rose. My plant loved it. However when it come to T8 LED bulbs there is very limited offerings.

What I'm saying, is I don't understand how plants would be experiencing more red light when flowering What happens with equatorial plants where the sun's position doesn't change much? What about those that after certain periods of dormancy? Those that a have a dry equatorial dormancy or those that have a cold or hot dormancy?

All plants use the spectrum they get for those reasons. They use the different spectrums to create different types of sugars, starches, vitamins, ect. It’s not that more red light is produced during different seasons it’s just they use the red spectrums more for flowering/seeds/fruit/root growth, and don’t use as much when they are just trying to grow a leaf or a stem!

Also plants in the equator just flat out get more light in general.

Dormancy happens usually because it gets to hot or to cold for a plant. Even though the amount of available light decreases during fall and even more in winter, and the light starts to increase in spring.