True 6500 Kelvin light source 13W.
- High light levels at the right wavelengths for powerful plant growth.
- Perfect to use increase visible light levels and alongside UVB emitting lamps.
- Diffusion angle : 120°.
- Compatible with :
- Twin compact lamp unit.
- Compact lamp unit.
- Ceramic lamp holder.
This traditional type of E26 LED unit has been around for a very long time and was popularised by a company that manufactured LEDs for general lighting before tailoring it for hydroponic plant growing. It also made it into the aquatic market in late 2013, appearing in some popular plug and play aquariums.
The New Dawn compact was the first in the range of Reptile Systems plant growing LEDs to be introduced to the market. With its classic styling it would be easy to confuse with other brands of lower quality and inferior components. Reptile systems New Dawn compacts have been engineered for lush plant growth and feature a multitude of upgraded features for reliability and longevity.
With smaller bio active and planted enclosures becoming more and more popular, this seemed like the perfect place to enter the market and start improving things.
To light these nano and desktop size terrariums we needed a small and compact LED lamp, we looked through many designs and extrusions before we chose the current models. The idea was to provide a high volume of light at the correct levels for small enclosures, taking into consideration how much light the mesh or screen tops would block. They are designed to be mounted horizontally and can be used with our rotating ceramic holder, twin or single compact lamp unit. This is the perfect solution for mesh topped vivariums.
Having a colour temperature of 6500k has been proven to promote the best vegetive growth for most plants used because plant growth is induced by the bluer end of the natural light spectrum. Natural sunlight ranges from 2700 and 7000 Kelvin.
The New Dawn Compact also has a high colour rendering index (CRI), showing your plants and inhabitant’s true vibrant colours. This colour temperate, coupled with good levels of the light intensity (lux), makes our compacts scientifically proven to be incredibly pleasing to the human eye.
The highly transmissive protective lens covering the light emitting diodes (LED) serves two important functions and is part of the safety requirements. This firstly is to stop you and your animals being at risk from touching any of the diodes. Secondly it protects the components from being accidentally sprayed with water or receiving any direct mechanical damage.
Repeatedly, we looked for an extrusion profile for the casing to fit our needs and kept returning to the tried and tested one that has been used by aquarists and plant growers. This off the shelf aluminium extrusion offers high thermal performance, transferring heat and allowing it to dissipate safely and efficiently, greatly extending the life of all the electronic components. In testing, carried out at our facility, it provided the greatest heat dissipation, making our working compacts to be the coolest we have tested.
The E26 end cap allows 320° rotation, which means you can angle the light output where its required in the vivarium. This rotator has always been a weak point with other brands, snapping and leaving you with an expensive, broken unusable light. Reptile Systems have upgraded this, at no extra cost, with a very strong mechanism that cannot be broken with normal use.
Two compacts are available in the range: 9w and 13w, giving a huge amount of light output for the low wattage, which also means low running costs.
With a beam angle of 120 degrees it covers a large area with high quality light, promoting explosive plant growth in your planted set up. Being safe and reliable, we are so confident in this product that it has a 2 year warranty.
If you have a larger environment or require a different type of premium plant lighting, New Dawn comes in a full range of models and sizes to cover all enclosure types, working with a variety of fittings and fixtures.
The frequently asked questions are:
How long does it last?
It should give you approximately 50,000 running hours and is backed by a 2 year warranty
How many lumens is it?
This is not really a relevant question, but it is 141 lumens per watt, with the newer ones being upgraded to 151 lumens per watt
My lamp doesn’t work!
Please go through the standard checks as these lamps are very reliable:
- check the fuse
- check the connection in the ceramic fitting
Some more information of New Dawn LEDs
LEDs have come a very long way since their original concept in the early 1900s. They have been used for every type of lighting application from standby lights on electrical appliances to high-tech headlights for cars and every other conceivable use in between.
The commercial application for growing crops and plants indoors, or in hostile environments using LEDs, is great although on a large scale would require some investment. Large greenhouses can grow crops all year round using tailored lighting outputs to promote growth, budding and flowering, adding a predictability to crop harvest times and yields. Plant growing using LEDs is still, relatively, in its early days and is very exciting in terms of development; indoor crops have been grown using LED lights even in Arctic locations. It can bring a low energy way of taking farming to remote locations, even off planet, in the form of aquaponic and hydroponic farming, as a way of sustainably feeding people and livestock while providing a clean breathable atmosphere. As we can scale this down into our own indoor planted set ups, we can create a beautiful environment for our animals, enrich our sense of well-being, whilst cleaning the air in our house.
The hobby has been blessed with an upsurge of people wanting to keep plants, either on their own or as part of an enclosure for animals. Paludaria, terraria, carnivorous plant and bio active are, to name but a few, ways in which plants are being used creatively to make eye pleasing terrascapes for domestic environment. Effectively, lighting for optimal plant growth, while making them pleasing to the human eye, is the goal.
It is worth noting that a trade-off must be made, as plants have different light absorption peaks than people. Photosynthetic light is in the red and blue spectra while human eyesight peaks more in the yellow and green colour range. Most plants still require limited amounts of light from other parts of the spectrum for other processes. This should always be taken into consideration as PAR (photosynthetic available radiation) is not the same as lumen or lux, which are more a measure of brightness to the human eye. So basically, just because an LED is very bright, by human standards, it does not necessarily mean it is the best lamp for plant growth. We should be aiming for a colour of around 6500 Kelvin, which is considered best to cover all bases. We have designed the Reptile Systems New Dawn range to satisfy all these criteria and have an on-going development process to improve as we discover more, and affordable technology becomes available.
We get asked two general questions about New Dawn:
Why do you make so many different types of plant lights?
All the New Dawn range include 141 or 151 lumen output chips and have a colour temperature of around 6500k. As this is not a ‘one size fits all’ solution, we have come up with a comprehensive range of lighting to fulfil all your needs. This is why we have New Dawn compacts, spots, T5 and Proten LED bars. They each serve a lighting solution for different situations. For example, a 10w spot will spread light in a very different way than a 10w T5. We have the 10w spot to punch down the light further as LEDs have a weird physical law that governs their output over distance. This is called the inverse square law, as you move further away the output is reduced by a squared factor. Therefore, if you take a reading at 1m and another at 2m it is not halved it is quartered, at 3m it is reduced by a factor of nine and at 4m by sixteen and so on, e.g. 100 at 2m is 100 ÷ 4 (2²) = 25. The use for different lamps will be explained in further episodes.
Why use the name New Dawn?
Quite simply really, each day starts with a new dawn as the sun’s powerful life-giving light bestows its gift upon the world, also we like the lyrics to the Nina Simone hit song as it gives an organic feeling of happiness.
