Lighting a 90 gallon tank

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Unfortunately, it is taking my husband forever to build the cabinet so it is going to be a few months before anything is set up. I am just in the planning stages so your tank will be up and running before mine. thank you again for your help.
 
blang said:
All of you have been very helpful. I do have a few more questions:

I feel more comfortable going with a popular brand and like the Coralife CF. That means that I could get up to 2.8 wpg. Now lets suppose I decide I really enjoy planting and want to get into the "high light" plants. Would this be enough?

I would really like to purchase a light once so what would you recommend for a beginner who isn't quite sure how involved they want to be in planting. Is this a good choice?

I plan to have a community tank with Cories, Gouramis, Dennison Barbs, Rainbow fish and plecos.
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2.8wpg in CF is worth more then 3wpg NO and the rule was made up for NO.. 4 CF 65watt bulbs is up to 24,000 lumens that should be plenty of light for high light plants in your 90 gallon...
 
Well, that is good news! So how many bulbs can I use for medium light and how many for low light? It sounds I really can't go wrong with this fixture.
 
Medium light would be 3 ~5000-10000K bulbs or 2 ~5000-10000k bulbs and 2 50/50 bulbs and low light would be... 2 ~5000-10000k bulbs or 4 50/50 bulbs.. It would be a good idea to go with the 50/50 bulbs to keep the light even over your tank.. I would place if 2 of them opposite and across from each other.. It should be possible to do a medium light planted tank without CO2 injection at these light levels but CO2 injection would help.. If all bulbs are of useable color temperature (~5000-10000K) CO2 injection will become a nessasity.. I hope this helps.. :mrgreen:
 
And you really couldnt go wrong with either of the fixtures mentioned.. They are the same one just having a different brand name then the other :mrgreen:
 
xzap - yes you'll need CO2. Even at 2wpg, CO2 is highly recommended, especially when running CF's.
 
Xzap.. they make a 4X55 watt 48" fixture as well.. 220watts..
Its the same fixture it just has the 55watt bulbs in it instead of the 65watt bulbs..
 
What's the "Walstad thingy"?

Also, can you have lowlight plants when using medium light?

Is it really worth getting the CF if you are replacing some of the bulbs with 50/50?
 
the first one.. its NO.. in other words it uses T-8 bulbs there 32 watts a piece thats only 96 total watts.. I dont think your going to want to get that.. you would need to overdrive it to get the watts you need..
If your getting CF it would be easier to get a 4 bulb fixture like the ones on e-bay and put to of them 50/50 to get you down to medium light.. bigals has them in coralife but you would pay an extra $100 for the name brand..ACK!!! jebo/odyssea makes the same fixtures.. cooling fans and double power cords for 100 bucks on e-bay.. the coralife fixture is almost 200..
the 2-96 watt fixture has about $70-80 worth of parts in it as well the coralife is overpriced in my opinion.. It used to be the only option is why it was overpriced but now that there are perfectly fine alternatives people seem to think that coralife is so much better that they should have to pay a 80-100% quality fee.. I think this is rediculas.. :roll:
 
blang said:
What's the "Walstad thingy"?

Also, can you have lowlight plants when using medium light?

Is it really worth getting the CF if you are replacing some of the bulbs with 50/50?
Click to expand...

Walstad is a author of some books on natural techniques.. theres a web-site if Im not mistaking...

lowlight plant and medium light...Yes

You have to get CF to get medium light unless you plan on Overdriving NO in a 90 gallon tank..

Two T-8's OD'd 4X should give medium light.. it would take about $50-60 worth of ballast to do it.. you could OD 4 of them to 2X with ~$30 worth of ballast but you would have 4 power cords! LOL Not to mention you would have to rewire the fixture.. a 4 bulb Jebo/Odyssea would cost less in this case...
 
blang said:
What's the "Walstad thingy"?

Also, can you have lowlight plants when using medium light?

Is it really worth getting the CF if you are replacing some of the bulbs with 50/50?
Click to expand...

Diane Walstad's book can be found here: http://www.atlasbooks.com/marktplc/00388.htm

You can find lots of articles by Googling. Don't try to understand the whole book or concept all at once. Just stick to the basic principals she outlines and see how that does for you.

Thx,

Dave
 
greenmagi said:
blang said:
Two T-8's OD'd 4X should give medium light.. it would take about $50-60 worth of ballast to do it.. you could OD 4 of them to 2X with ~$30 worth of ballast but you would have 4 power cords! LOL Not to mention you would have to rewire the fixture.. a 4 bulb Jebo/Odyssea would cost less in this case...
Click to expand...

You lost me here.....Can I just buy 2 regular 50/50 bulbs and replace them with the ones that come with the fixture? Anything more than that would be too complicated for me.
Click to expand...
 
with the 4 65watt CF fixture yes you can just replace 2 of the bulbs with 50/50 bulbs but I said that about 2 pages ago..
 
Sorry, I just got very confused (which is not a hard thing to do). I did reread everything but I was still getting confused. However, now I understand. Thanks.
 
I bought one of the 220 watt jebo off of Aquadeal on Ebay for $80.99 SHIPPED! Good lights. Came with 2 10k and 2 ultra actnic. I was told the jebo actnics arent true actnics, so i bought actnic 03 from hellolights the other day. I'm going to be setting up salt with the lights. But I have a 90 gallon also.
 
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