Hi Ari,

It's good of you to share your experience.

I have run two warm daylight[wrong colour temp] pl phillips 36W lights in a small tank[36G] and the plants did very well to my surprise. pearling in most of the plants... Queen of Siam, Blyxa Japonica, Blyxa Aubertii, Mini riccia, Shimadai. The only thing is later i tried to grow glosso but the glosso grew tall as the tank was 2 ft high and i couldn't fit in more lights at the top because of space limitations. Perhaps a stronger special output light would have kept the glosso growing low.

That's why minimum threshold is not enough when the lamps start to fade. Choice of plants are also important in decision making. The idea of shade plants or bright light plants.

From experience glosso is really the most light needy plant i've come across because of the low level of planting.
FIY it took me two to three years to figure out i didn't have enough lighting for glosso in two ft high tanks. I started out using azoo tubes then sera, arcadia, powerglo, hitachi and last year some ADA and then phillips and osram. so far i think not much difference except for colour rendition once you exceed the plants needs in terms of lighting.


Aroholic, the shop light 150W MH can grow plants but you need to mix it with some colour correcting fl tubes to get the desired colour as there is a bit of blue that makes red plants look dull in appearance. They are very 'spotlight' in terms of the intensity and would be better depending on the dimensions of your tank if you got the 70W ones and spread them. eg. 4 ft wide tank use 2X70W mh + one fl daylight/pink tube.

regards

stan

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Ari, now I'm really confused. Is it K or is it Lux that is used to measure the brightness of lights? I see in your setup, you have 18000K yet the Lux is lower than the 2800K lights. I remember reading an article explaining these things but it was way too technical (or maybe I was still too newbie at that time). Can any forumers share any good articles explaining these K and Lux thingies? And if FLs can achieve such great brightness, what is the use of PLs then? Stan had a look at my set of 4x36W PLs and it seems it is not being used to it's full potential due to everything being crammed up into a small space and all sharing one single reflector.

I think some parameter is missing in all the forum and thread discussion on light. They keep saying how many k per gallon, but never incorporate how many hours they keep the lights on.... and the number of hour plays a crutial part in the final result. So, I would suggest we use a matrik of ?W/?G@?H, where W refer to watt, G refer to gallon and H refer to number of hour they are on. For example, 4W/G@10H. That's will help new hobbist like me to understand the lighting requirement.

Hi guys,
Lighting for tanks are quite complicated and we can only quote experts who post articles or from things we read.
This is always too much info for the average hobbyist.

So the WPG guide came about to simplify matters. [Whoever the inventor is] this is what i take it to be for planted tanks: <2 WPG is low, 2-3 WPG medium 3-4 high >4 super high
In actual fact this is just a rough guide assuming that using FL lights with ordinary reflectors and standard 18" high tank with reasonably clear water. [not blackwater setup!]

WPG guide becomes very inaccurate for tanks below 25G. Smaller tanks would seem to have like ~8WPG when it has only 2X15WFL on a 4G.

For bigger tanks above 125G it also dips in accuracy a little.
eg a 2WPG for a 200G is 400W of lighting. [which is actually moderate to high in actual plant growth/speed terms.]

The more accurate measurement would be total W/surface area with due consideration to height of tank, water clarity, surface scum, reflectors etc.

some definitions on Lux.
The lux (symbol: lx) is the SI unit of illuminance. It is used in photometry as a measure of the perceived[what we see] intensity of light.

Caution though, we may look at a bulb and think it's very bright but what the plants uses may not be in that range it's emitting.
The important wavelength of light needed by plants are in the PAR[photosynthetically active radiation]
so specially made bulbs are presumed to have this incorporated. So we get pay a premium for these tweaked bulbs.

So wanting to have lasting power in this hobby means finding cheaper ways to do things.
Imagine changing 20tubes yearly at average 60 bucks per tube? pock kai man.

In conclusion so far the new shop bulbs works.
The CRI[colour rendition index] looks good and is only a fraction of the cost.
That said, I still buy the 'designer bulbs but mix and match them.


Regards

Stan

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I recently bought a casing that supports two 3 ft FL tubes to complement my existing 4ft casing holding 4x 36W Philips PL-L lights. Currently contemplating what FL lights to buy and have ruled out the Philips 865 since it's 4ft and cannot fit the casing. Have narrowed down to the Hagen xxxGlo series since it appears to be the most affordable and not so dubious as the Azoo lights. Having a tough time deciding whether to get SunGlo, PowerGlo, AquaGlo, LifeGlo etc... so many to choose from and the damn Hagen site does little to clarify. Maybe some forumers can help me out. Basically, my current setup gives me glowing green leaves (which I'm ok but would prefer more natural-looking lights). I don't fancy yellow lights or pinkish lights either (I only put pink lights in an effort to bring out the colours of my red fishes). My FL lights should also help my Rotala Macrandas and Toninas to flourish if possible. Any ideas?

I've found a site that seems to help. Check it out:
http://saurama.aqua-web.org/

Hi hypersushi2,

You may want to look at this lighting brochure from Hagen : http://www.hagen.com/pdf/aquatic/glo_brochure.pdf. Requires acrobat reader. Quite intensive info for every kind of aquarium ligthing.

Anyway if I were you, I would go for LifeGlo 2 with Flora Glo or PowerGlo. But if money no object, I would go for Acardia Freshwater and Acardia Tropical instead.

Best Regards

I'm using all the different glos from Hagen. Not bad for it's price, half that of arcadia. Off the top of my head, I think Aquaglo from Hagen looks pink-ish. LifeGlo2 looks better for planteds. I'd recommend Lifeglo2 for the more natural look.

yo man soli to hijack thread..soli soli

but need help a bit here bout lighting,

can e ballast use for fl tube use on 2 pin pl light ( those abit low wattage wan...pl like 22wwatt pl)

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pls visit my new planted tank website
www.geocities.com/hooifx125

BOLEH...can use

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Why most of the tank(>90%) sold in LFS come in with insufficient light?
I went and take a look just to survey the price vs my budget, but found that almost all the tank readymade cover only come with 1 PL light @ 11w or 13w.... and there is no place to add in another tube.... I see 1 in KW(Pg) sold at RM150, I guess is 2f x 2f, only come with 11w light in the cover.....
Is all sifu tank's cover(including the light) all DIY?