I am planning to have a planted tank.

[molly100a]

You can get inexpensive t5ho lights on the internet and they will work fine it's the dirt that's important. I've grown stargrass, swords, wisteria, water sprite, crypts, dwarf sag, jungle val, salvinia, duck weed. On my 20 gal dirted tank I have two cfl bulbs 65k from home depot. Works just fine, you don't need high price lights, the more lights, the more algae.

 

[FishCr8zy]

Well you don't need dirt. It will be hard for a beginner because it'll raise some parameters and you have to wait to everything to settle. For low light plants, you can just have plain old gravel/sand.
But yes you can build your own T5 HO fixture. A single t5 HO bulb will be low-med light. Just make sure it is within 4000-8000K.

 

[saltwaterbeginners]

Well you don't need dirt. It will be hard for a beginner because it'll raise some parameters and you have to wait to everything to settle. For low light plants, you can just have plain old gravel/sand.
But yes you can build your own T5 HO fixture. A single t5 HO bulb will be low-med light. Just make sure it is within 4000-8000K.

I don't know how to build it.

 

[FishCr8zy]

What I did was get a few floodlight LEDs and some reflectors at Home Depot. Then you just connect the LEDs into the reflectors. They are pretty bright and the reflectors came with heavy duty clamps so I could clamp it onto the tank. Or you can get a glass canopy and rest the lights on top of that. The flood lights were 6000K.