Confused about bulbs

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Mickeybags

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Aug 3, 2014
Messages
51
I currently have a single aqueon 15 watt t8 bulb. I've been doing a lot of research to figure out what bulb is the best for me. I figure it's better for me to have more lighting than necessary since I have ottos and nerite snails that do an amazing job at keeping algae at bay. However, I can't seem to find a fluorescent bulb over 15 watts. What confuses me however is what makes one bulb better than another? I've tried doing a planted tank before and it failed. I'm trying again this time with liquid c02 and flourish. But I would like more light! Is the wattage what makes a bulb more suited for plants or is there another factor. Also, am I wasting my time with and money with trying to find an incandescent and should I just switch to an LED such as a finnex planted+? Am I even on the right track with my planted tank. I'm trying to keep it low tech. Meaning no co2 tanks and straight sand substrate. If necessary I will remove the sand in the future to add a layer more suited for plants.

2 anubias nana
3 crypt wendeti
2 bocopa


Dorm room fish keeper
 
Flourescent bulbs' power is determine by there length. Standard 18" bulbs will all be 15w. There are higher output bulbs such as T5NO or T5HO but they have to have there own special fixtures. The T8 stands for 1/8" diameter increments. ie. A T8 is 8/8ths or 1" diameter. A T5 is 5/8ths of an inch diameter. What is important is the temperature or frequency of the bulb. Plants do best with bulbs from 5000 to 8000 degrees Kelvin. A good quality bulb listed as a daylight bulb will work well. Most good bulbs have the frequency stamped on them somewhere. Hope this helps. OS.
 
OS nailed the bulbs so I'll hit leds. If you're wanting an up grade? Led? The finnex planted plus on anything less than 18" tall is going to require some added efforts such as a carbon supplement or co2 coupled with a solid fertilizers dosing routine. The more light the faster plants will grow and consume nutrients.. remember algae is a plant.. you mentioned wanting to supplement your otos diet but I doubt you'll want a green tank in the process; ) checkout the current satellite plus and finnex stingray for low light led solutions..

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Aquarium Advice mobile app
 
Whatever you do, avoid 10000 K bulbs, they're intended for corals in salt tanks and will turn most FW tanks into algae farms.

Debatable at best..

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Aquarium Advice mobile app
 
Based only on the tanks I've seen where the owners tried 10,000 K lights.. two of them to be precise.

There are so many other variables involved to rule 10k bulbs as the sole culprit. I'd think bml would discontinue their planted 10k led if it would only grow algae.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Aquarium Advice mobile app
 
Color temperature has mostly nothing to do about how good or bad a light is for plants. It only indicates how the light will look to us on a scale of reddish to blueish. Too much blue (high color temp) doesn't look good with plants but makes coral colors very beautiful. IMO freshwater looks best between 4500K-8000K.

Plants, algea, and corals all have the same types of chlorophyll so they benefit from the same parts of the light spectrum.

Algea thrive when plants don't. Usually that is when the plants don't have enough fertilizers and carbon (Excel or CO2) for the amount of light they receive.

Read this about light
Lighting Spectrum and Photosythesis - Lighting - Aquatic Plant Central

My suggestion for good lighting is to make your own LED fixture. It is quite easy to do. I like rapidled for their solderless LEDs. And with a dimmable driver you can tone it down and avoid algea problems.
Rapid LED

I like to use this tool (from another LED company) to help decide the mix of LEDs, to get the color temperature I want and a high CRI (color rendering index, means a full spectrum that makes contrasts and colors come to life and so beautiful you won't believe good light could make such a difference).
Custom LED Strip - BML Custom
 
Terrific information on lighting, thanks, it was fascinating.

I'm no kind of expert on lighting, so my comment on 10,000 K bulbs resulting in too much algae were based strictly on the only two tanks I've ever seen in person that were using them to grow plants.

But I should have been more specific when I did comment. The larger tank I saw, approx. 60G, with a T5 fixture, was using a 10,000 K & a, I think, 6500 K tube, the other, a 29G, had a 10,000 K & I forget what the other one was.

Both of these tanks had big algae problems. However, I couldn't begin to guess what any of the other possible variables might have been. I don't even know if the T5s were HO.

The BML people very clearly know what they're doing, but there's no true comparison between tanks like the ones I saw, where the light from the T5 tubes was whatever the maker decided it should be, to the BML planted tank, which has the benefit of being lighted by carefully selected LEDS, in a fixture designed to get the very best possible results in terms of CRI and PAR. I wish I could afford fixtures like those !

I wonder what size the OP tank is ?
 
A 10G could be lit with just a couple of spiral 6500 Ks if you wanted. I use them in clamp lamps, relatively cheap utility fixtures with 8 inch round reflectors. If you have a handy shelf, you can clip them onto that.. I do this for Betta tanks I have on book shelves. There are other ways.. be creative ! They grow a great many plants quite well.. but not the very demanding, high light plants.
 
I wish there was a sticky with everything you need on a planted tank. There's so many different opinions and ideas in this hobby it's hard to find reliable and consistent information


Dorm room fish keeper
 
Like any hobby, there will always be many opinions and many ideas. About all you can do is read as much as you can and make your own choices. There is usually more than one right way to do most things.. about the only thing that's pretty solidly universal is to keep water parameters stable for fish.. 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, but even the amount of nitrate that's good or safe will vary from one person's opinion to another.
 
Like many human activities, there will always be many opinions and many ideas. About all you can do is read as much as you can and make your own choices. There is usually more than one right way to do most things.. about the only thing that's pretty solidly universal is to keep water parameters stable for fish.. 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, but even the amount of nitrate that's good or safe will vary from one person's opinion to another.
 
A 10G could be lit with just a couple of spiral 6500 Ks if you wanted. I use them in clamp lamps, relatively cheap utility fixtures with 8 inch round reflectors. If you have a handy shelf, you can clip them onto that.. I do this for Betta tanks I have on book shelves. There are other ways.. be creative ! They grow a great many plants quite well.. but not the very demanding, high light plants.
I've done that myself with an economy "incandescent" hood. About 10 watts per bulb * 2 is about right unless you have something like a scarlet temple. I've used 10w, 13w, 15w, 18w, 20w, and 25w in 2700K, 5000K, 6500K, 10,000K/Actintic, and GLO-Fish colors, all with lots of luck. Like anything else, there are times when one is better than the other, and different brands have different efficiencies. For this reason, you want a recognizeable brand over Damar or Ott Lite. I'm sure Aqueon is brighter than the rather bright already Philips, GE, and Fiet bulbs, though I have not tried one yet.

So you know, PAR and Lumens measure the same thing (volume of light, the critical number) but PAR is weighted toward plants (and excludes green) and Lumens is weighted toward our eyesight.
 
I know little about a lot but ...

I have done well with those plants in a 10 gallon with the cheapie hood and two 9w cfls whose specs say on the back they're around 6500k. The crypts and anubias started growing like mad, compared to no progress at all in a 29 gallon low light.


Sent from my iPhone with three hands tied behind my back.
 
Back
Top Bottom