Lighting for beginner planted tank.

[smithpants94]

I'm looking to add some beginner style plants to my established 30 gallon. Just a few for now to give my fish a more natural environment.

In the tank now:
1 Flame Dwarf Gourami
5 Zebra Danios
5 Bloodfin Tetras
(maybe adding some corys or another dg)

I want to add plant-wise:
Java Fern
Java Moss
Jungle Val
And maybe something else(not sure yet)

Anyways, I want a light to be good for my plants and my fish.

I got really frustrated trying to figure out the Ks and the spectrums and the this and the that....

So here I am, help me out with some lights, some plants, even talk to me about my stock! I'm up for anything.

 

[Brian_Nano12g]

What's your budget and how long is your 30g?

 

[smithpants94]

I want to try and stay around or under $100, so nothing too fancy.

The tank is 36" long and about 16" tall.

 

[Brian_Nano12g]

For the K's in spectrum.. for planted aquarium, you generally want something anywhere between the 6500K to 10,000K light spectrum. They will all grow plants but it's generally looked upon that the closer to the 6500K color temp will mimic the sun mid-day the closest. However, this is really up to you and is subjective because the closer it is to 6500K the warmer the color will be (more yellow/red hues), whereas the the closer to 10000K, you'll get whiter blueish hues. I personally like something right smack in the middle... that's why one my aquariums with 2 PC florescent bulbs, I have one 6500K and one 10,000K in the hood... which gives me something around an 8,000K color temp. Perfect for me IMO. That's why you'll see in a lot of new LED fixtures, the LED color temp is going to be around 8000K to 10000K. My Finnex Ray II LED fixture for instance is 8000K daylight.

But for your needs with a low-light low tech planted tank.... you can probably get a single bulb T5 such as the Aqueon 36" T5 (comes with a bulb) for $72...
Freshwater Aquarium Lighting » Aqueon® Freshwater T5 Light Fixture | PetSmart

Or if you're thinking upgrades down the road, maybe getting in to more moderate to high light plants, maybe even co2 injection... Perhaps a dual lamp T5HO fixture will do? That would be too much light for your tank in it's current state, so if you can find a reasonably priced dual T5HO that would still work with one bulb pulled out, that might be enough to tame that light fixture for now and would give you the option to use both bulbs in case you want to step it up in the planted tanks arena in the future? Just food for thought.