FreshwaterTropical
Aquarium Advice FINatic
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2011
- Messages
- 700
I have a fluorescent tube 15 w bulb over my 40 gallon tank. How do I figure out watts per gallon or whatever so I can know what type of plants I will be able to keep.
D9VIN said:The bulbs for your current setup only come in one wattage. You can find some reasonable 2ft setups on evilbay. I would shoot for 50-60 watts at least. A 2ft t5ho 2 bulb would give you 48 watts.
D9VIN said:T5 is the size of the bulb, yours probably has a t8 bulb, and ho stands for high output. T5ho is a brighter fluorescent bulb type. The t-number is a measure of the diameter of the bulb. T5's are pretty small, the tubes you see in most overhead lights are t8's or t12's. There are regular t5's, often referred to as t5no (normal output), but they aren't as common for aquarium lights.
D9VIN said:Yeah, that fixture would be good, and coralife is a quality brand from what I hear, but that actinic blue bulb isn't going to help your plants out, so you would need to replace it if you wanted both lights to benefit the plants. You could find a comparable fixture for about half that on eBay though. The bulbs in the coralife will be higher quality, but not ideal for plant growth.
D9VIN said:It would be a little over 1 watt per gallon, but that is a very basic guideline. I would think it would give enough light for medium plants, but it is hard to say with an irregular shaped aquarium. How tall is it?