CFL's For 90 Gallon Planted FW Tank

[mrdbdigital]

I'm planning a freshwater 90 gallon planted tank, and I've heard that some are doing this successfully using standard CFL bulbs from Home Depot or Lowe's in homemade fixtures.

Anyone here have any experience with CFL bulbs for growing plants? What types, wattage, and how many for a 90 gallon tank, and are these bulbs available at Home Depot or Lowe's? What about color temperature?

Any suggestions would be welcome!

[SpeedEuphoria]

Are you talking about spiral compact fluorescent screw in bulbs?

For larger tanks it prob better and easier to use tube fluorescent bulbs like a shop light. The smaller diameter the better because of restrike, so T8's if you can find them would be better than T12's(but will still work)

look for 5,000k to 10,000K bulbs, normally sold as "daylight" or "full spectrum" or similar.

your wattage depends on how high of maintenance you are OK with. Like 1.5 watts per gallon(so 135 watts on a 90g) would be pretty low maintenance but grow some plants. Higher like ~2wpg and above will be more work and CO2/ferts would be a benefit/needed, plants will grow fast and almost anything will grow well.

[mrdbdigital]

I was under the impression that some were using the screw in type of CFL, but I think now that I just misunderstood, forgetting that there is more than one type of CFL bulb.

Thanks for your advice. It will get me going in the correct direction!

On a related matter, do you have any advice on the lighting products from A H Supply? I'm probably going to build some sort of custom light system for my new tank, and I've been looking at their stuff.

[brutus]

coralife makes a good power compact light for both freshwater and salt .the bulbs for freshwater are 6700k

[SpeedEuphoria]

Originally Posted by mrdbdigital

I was under the impression that some were using the screw in type of CFL, but I think now that I just misunderstood, forgetting that there is more than one type of CFL bulb.

Thanks for your advice. It will get me going in the correct direction!

On a related matter, do you have any advice on the lighting products from A H Supply? I'm probably going to build some sort of custom light system for my new tank, and I've been looking at their stuff.

Yeah I was not saying that you cannot use the screw in CFL's, as you certainly can. But on a larger tank IMO it would be easier to use something like a shoplight or similar with tubes.

I hear A H suppply has good products but have no experience w/ them