Adding live plants?

[black hills tj]

Hey Everyone,

I'm Mike. My dad and I have been running a 29g tank for a couple years now, and I'm looking to add some live plants to it. I was thinking some anacharis, some sort of grass(star grass maybe), java fern, and some amazon blades would be awesome. I currently have a mixed gravel substrate. The problem is that the hood we have on our tank currently has a 22w bulb(that's less than 1 watt per gallon!!!). What would be best to gain moderate lighting(1-3 wpg)? I've done a bit of research on live plants, but i'd like to know as much as possible before adding anything. Thanks


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Looking around and finding some info. Like I mentioned I currently have a hood with a single 22w NO fluorescent bulb. After Looking around i found this which looks like it may do the trick.

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Product/Prod_Display.cfm?pcatid=13612&N=2004+113349

The price looks nice. It comes with 2-17w NO fluorescent bulbs which would put me up around 1wpg. This seems like it would work well for the plants I'm looking at since they are mainly low-moderate lighting and all seem to be pretty hardy plants. Or should I look for a little more power?

Opions and/or suggestions?

 

[Purrbox]

The Amazon Sword would most likely outgrow your tank if you managed to get enough light over the tank to keep it happy. It's really more of a medium light plant. I'm not sure, but I believe that the Stargrass would also require more light than you are planning on.

With your current lighting you would pretty much be limited to Anubias, Crypts, Java Moss and Java Ferns. With the new light you would be able to add some of the low and medium low light plants. If you were to use both fixtures together you could definately add the medium low light plants and probably some medium light plants too.

PlantGeek.net has an excellant plant guide which allows you to look up plants by lighting requirements. I suggest that you give it a look and decide which plants you want so that you can determine how much light you really need to achieve your goals.

 

[Apocalypse_Gold]

The dual tube strip-lights are significantly wider than the single tube that comes with most hoods, so you will likely have to get a twin-tube glass canopy (for some reason the good doctors listing links you to the single width tops, but they do have the double-wides for sale). A simpler option is the Coralife Freshwater T-5 Aqualight Double Strip Light-30" . Two extra watts and no new top needed. Great color too.

That said, if you want to upgrade further eventually, get the all-glass twin-tube and wide canopy and look into overdriving it with stronger ballasts.

 

[black hills tj]

Just ordered a 24" CF and I'll build a housing for the top of the tank. This light will put out 65w, and I think 2wpg will open up a ton more options than 1-1.5wpg