Strong/Moderate or Low lighting on a 29 gal?

[yelle0277]

Hello all,

I am setting up my first aquarium, a 29 gallon that I would like to plant heavily. I have been lurking around on the forum learning tons of information from all your posts for a week or so. The question I have today is about lighting. My tank came with a 24" 17 watt T-8 with 10,000K. I added an additional lighting hood with two 23 watt CFL, 6500K each. I am wondering if this set up will work for plants with strong light requirements or if I should stick to moderate or low light plants. I am alos wondering how I should add CO2 to the tank. I built a small CO2 reactor using a gatorade bottle, yeast, sugar, water and airline tubing. Should I add the CO2 in small doses or put the tubing into the tank to disperse all the time?

Thank you very much for your help! I have already learned so much from all of you I look forward to hearing the response to these questions!

 

[mudraker]

That is plenty of light for moderate light plants.

If you move ahead with the co2, you'll probably want to let it diffuse 24/7, even though plants only use the Co2 when the lights are on.

I did yeast bottles on a 30 for over a year, with pretty good results.

What kind of plants are you considering? What kind of substrate?

You'll probably need to dose some type of fertz with moderate light plants, or at least some root tabs.

 

[yelle0277]

Thanks for the quick response!!

I really like the carpet type grasses but most of those are strong light right?? If I ever go to strong light plants should I add another light? I also like the tiger lotus and many of the sword plants. Possibly some java moss...I saw a cute 4 leaf clover plant at the LFS but it said strong light so I am hesitant to get it. I just have plain gravel, small pea stones. I looked into substrate but the LFS told me that as long as I fertilizer to the water or directly under the plants I should be fine. (I don't know enough to know if this is accurate or not)

 

[mudraker]

I really like the carpet type grasses but most of those are strong light right??

Mostly true. Look at Crypt parvae. Its a low-growing lowlight that will fill out pretty quickly.

If you start looking at highlight plants, start looking at fertz and co2, period.

Java moss and tiger lotus are excellent for low/med light plants. Those clover things are nonaquatic, be careful.

Pea gravel will work fine, I use it in several lowlight planted tanks.

The type of fertz you use definately depends on the types of plants.

Some are heavy root feeders and require microfertz, other require more macros.

In my personal experience, its best to start out lowlight, lowtech and work your way up from there.

 

[yelle0277]

Thanks! This helps a lot!!

 

[fort384]

Agree with all of Mudraker's advice. You ought to be able to grow just about any low to medium light plants. I think most of the popular carpet type plants like microsword, hc, dwarf hairgrass, etc would have trouble surviving without a bit more lighting (you have lots of watts, but a lot of the CFL light is wasted) and also the addition of CO2 and ferts.

 

[yelle0277]

Forgive my ignorance... why is most of the light from the cfl's wasted? They seem to be much brighter than the fluorescent.

 

[fort384]

It has to do with the way the light is reflected. CFLs are very suitable for use in area lighting (like in a lamp in a room). However, in an aquarium, we are more interested in point lighting. T8s and especially T5HOs are especially suitable, as it is easy to reflect most of the light down into the tank. With CFLs this just isn't the case. If the fixture has some kind of reflector, it will help... but it will still be far more inefficient than a T8 or T5.

 

[yelle0277]

It has to do with the way the light is reflected. CFLs are very suitable for use in area lighting (like in a lamp in a room). However, in an aquarium, we are more interested in point lighting. T8s and especially T5HOs are especially suitable, as it is easy to reflect most of the light down into the tank. With CFLs this just isn't the case. If the fixture has some kind of reflector, it will help... but it will still be far more inefficient than a T8 or T5.

Thank you!

 

[BigJim]

There's some good info here. LEDs make nicely efficient lighting for an aquarium because they direct all their light in whichever direction you point them. The buy-in cost is a bit high at the moment though.

Mudraker, what's your trick to get crypt parvae to grow quickly? I've heard that it's more of a medium light plant and a slow grower. My experience has confirmed this so far. I have some in my 20H under 36W of T5 lighting and it's put out a few leaves, but the crypt lutea I bought at the same time had more than tripled in size in the same tank. I just switched to a 30W LED fixture in hopes that the parva will grow better.