lighting q

[tenny]

hey

i'm converting a salt water to a fresh water which will someday be a planted tank. over it right now i have an aqua glo, 2 x marine glo and a power glo. is this going to be ok for fresh water? it's more setup for salt water... what will the blue spectrum in a fresh water tank do?

 

[greenmaji]

What type of bulbs are they, wattage, kelvin ratings? NO? as long as you dont have alot of watts in the "useable spectrium" it shouldnt be a problem.. Some FW tanks are run with nothing but 03 bulbs just for the color.. light is light when comes to FW fish tanks.. but with plants you wont see much growth with the 03 spectrium lights (maybe a little bushier growth but not much help in sustaining plant life in general in FW).. HTH

 

[tenny]

it's a 25 gallon tank with 4 20 watt bulbs. They are all NO. I am not sure of the kelvin ratings, the marine glows are blue spectrum, the other 2 are pretty much white spectrum. They are made by hagen, i'll see if I can find the exact ratings on there site.

 

[greenmaji]

You might want to start out with some plants.. you will have about 40 watts of "usable" light and thats about 1.5 wpg.. a very good number for low light plants (and will likely help algae growth without any plants to consume nutrients)
this link should help..
http://www.plantgeek.net/plantguide_cat.php?category=1

 

[tenny]

what would be some good tubes to switch the marine glo's with?

 

[greenmaji]

Cheap "daylight" bulbs from the hardware store.. GE makes them in 6500K.. they make a 5500K bulb as well.. both are good choices though the 5500K is more yellow/orange.. but.. your going to be in CO2 injected, fertilizers territory if you switch them out.. anything near 2.5wpg is highly recomened to supplement CO2 for your plants.. but.. at 3wpg.. you should be able to grow right about anything assuming your tank isn't very deep (less then say 18 inches with NO.. just a off handed estamate on my part) .. check out the planted tank section of the forum and read the sticky posts.. If you have more questions about CO2, fertilizers ect, ect, ect.... you might be better off posting those in there.. they will get attention from members that give advice mostly in there.
that.. and the search function works well, there have been alot of good questions answered here (if you click on the button that includes all terms just below the search field, otherwise youll get alot of hits on unrelated issues) HTH

 

[tenny]

the annoying part about the search is that people put stuff in there signature making the search almost completely useless. It's very difficult to find most things.

So either the 5500k or 6500k are fine for plants?