Plant Newbie

[Tropical]

I have a 10 gallon tank that I want to add live plants to. It currently houses around 30 Endlers (yikes!), but I'll be shipping a bunch out next week so that I'll only have about 4. I just need a little help with what plants I can have in the tank. I have pool filter sand.

The lights were incandescent, but I replaced one of them with a 14 watt Daylight CFL from Home Depot. The color temperature is 5000k, will that work? It was the highest I could find. I can replace the other incandescent with another 14 watt CFL, but the tank already looked super bright so I left it as it is. Can I grow plants in this, and if so, which plants?

Here are the bulbs http://www.homedepot.com/Electrical...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

Thanks!

 

[jcolon]

Generally for plants you want 6500K. You can certainly give the bulb a try, your best bet would be low light plants ... see the links below.

PlantGeek.net - Plant Guide

PAR vs Distance, T5, T12, PC - Updated Charts

 

[Tropical]

Oh, I thought 5000k was fine for plants, and since it's two CFL's at 28 watts it would be medium lighting. I'll give some lowlight plants a go though, can you recommend a good centerpiece type plant? I'd love a something like a sword, but I think they get too big for my tank.

 

[mfdrookie516]

You can't really say one kelvin temp will work for plants, as the spectrums are what's important. Because it's often not advertised, it's easy to recommend 6500k-10,000k bulbs because they typically emit those spectrums. There are some plant bulbs that are 2800k, but they grow plants just fine. Just give it a try and see what happens, you'll most likely have no issues.

There are a lot of plant options available. You've got your typical low lights, which are java fern, java moss, anubias, anacharis... then you've got a lot more options if you take a look at the plantgeek guide. Swords definitely get too big, but you could look at the various types of anubias. Some of those resemble swords IMO.

 

[Tropical]

Ok, I'll check it out.