Lighting help

[BlitzCraze]

Hello I have two of these coralife bulbs in my ten gallon what plants are suitable for my light and would you consider this low light?

So again they are in a ten gallon what plant would you recommend?

 

[FastFly67]

Can you return the bulbs? IMO you just wasted your money. You can go to your local hardware store or wal mart, purchase the CFL bulbs labeled 'daylight' (6500k) for CHEAP and they would work much better. Those bulbs put out actinic light which does absolutely nothing for your plants (great for corals) and 10000k is at the height of the spectrum.

 

[BlitzCraze]

So there not good for my plants at all? Will they grow my plants well tho?

 

[FastFly67]

I'd stick to low light plants and you probably won't see much growth. Keep them alive probably but alot of the light it puts out, your plants just can't use.

 

[BlitzCraze]

So the 6500 light will grow my plants much better ?

 

[BlitzCraze]

That is my tank java fern African fern and a water rose and some grass

 

[fisheyed]

Also if each bulb is 20 watts then you have 40 watts in a 10 gallon, that's a lot of light. When you get the correct color temperature (6500k) then you may need to consider adding CO2 to your tank to help your tank be in balance with the amount of light you're providing..... Or just use one bulb, 2watts per gallon is perfectly reasonable for a 10 gallon low light plant tank and a photo period of 9-10 hours a day.

 

[aqua_chem]

One bulb would look ridiculous. Half of a tank lit up and the other not?

The reality is that a 20w 50/50 bulb is suboptimal, but it is still 50% 10kK light (10w), so you'll be getting enough light to your plants. The question is will the other 10w of actinic will cause problems with respect to algae. You might as well try it out.

If you do get new bulbs, I would recommend getting 10w or 13w Utube bulbs. The spiral CFLs you get at hardware stores are ok, but they will throw off proportionally less light that Utubes just by virtue of their design. They are more budget friendly, however.

Also, remember that with light in a planted tank, more light is not better. Once you get past the threshold of minimum amount of light, more light will usually just yield more problems.