blacklight harmful??

[huma-huma]

i currently have a planted 20g... i recently completed a DIY 2-bulb hood, one bulb being a 50/50 (for normal daytime use) and a smaller 18" blacklight (for night time use).. i noticed that some of my PLANTS have started to turn a brownish color and die.....is it possible that the blacklightcould be killing my plants??

 

[Hubert90]

i currently have a planted 20g... i recently completed a DIY 2-bulb hood, one bulb being a 50/50 (for normal daytime use) and a smaller 18" blacklight (for night time use).. i noticed that some of my PLANTS have started to turn a brownish color and die.....is it possible that the blacklightcould be killing my plants??

What kinda plants do u have? It's most probably because Ur plants can't use the light from both ur lights. But I'm not an expert with lights. I'll leave that to plant guru mfdrookie516

 

[huma-huma]

To be honest, I know nothing about plants, I simply bought them to give some coverage. Imma do some research and get the plant names and put them up on here...

 

[Hubert90]

Post some pics. People on aa are good at identifying plants.

 

[Mr. Limpet]

It'll also help to know what your lightng is. Wattage, color spectrum (ie 6400K, etc) and how long your photoperiod is.

 

[mfdrookie516]

I don't think a blacklight will hurt anything... I'm pretty sure the sun emits the same color in some spectrum or another. I'd say the reason they're turning brown is from insufficient lighting. A 50/50 bulb only provides a little bit of usable light. I'd swap it out for a true daylight bulb (something in the 6500k-10,000k range). The wattage and type of bulb will have some play in what plants you can keep as well.

 

[huma-huma]

Im running a 24"florescent zoo-med reefsun 50/50 for my main light..and a GE 18"florescent blacklight blue 15w for my night light.....I just think I figured out what's causing the plants to die off....when I did the diy hood...I had to remove the white reflective background from behind my daytime bulb...and being that there s another bulb beside it now, I lost a good bit of brightness to the right side of my tank...where my plants are..looks like Imma be doing a led hood sooner than expected..

**update -i found an 18"florescent full spectrum bulb I had laying around, I've replaced my blacklight with it and im going to run both for 2 days or so and see what happens

 

[huma-huma]