Lighting

[seeked]

Hello again,

This thread i a spin off from one i poseted yesterday. About Brown Algae, plecos.

It seems that i don't get enough natural sunlight to my tank.
So i dicided to change the neon tube to a more ralistinc natural light spectrum. There is so much to chose.

What should i buy? any advice?
I was looking at the Hagen Sun glo series but i'm getting mixed reviews.

Thanks
S.

 

[jp80911]

never used Sun Glo series but I use 6700K and 10000K bulbs.

 

[Zander_The_RBP]

IMO it really depends. sunglo's are about 4200k which is white with a tinge of yellow this wouldlook good in say a blackwater tank where it would bring out the darkness of the water but if it's not going to be used in conjunction with a higher kelvin rating bulb it's going to look like sh** and wash out the colours of your piranhas


get the hagen life glo tube (6700k) or better yet go to home depot find a tube labeled daylight deluxe (would be 2 tubes in a pack for 8 bucks) and check on the side it should say 6500k i use them they look great really brought out the reds of my piranhas bellies

 

[TRENT]

I personally I would not go any less than 6700k (unless you like a yellow tint look). I just bought lights last week and bought (1) 6700k and (1)10,000k. Couldn't bee happier. GL

 

[JakeH]

Sun-Glo are waaay too yellow for me. I agree that anything from 6700k up would work. I like the 14,000k Aqua-Glo, but 10,000k might make the reds pop better.

 

[Zander_The_RBP]

Sun-Glo are waaay too yellow for me. I agree that anything from 6700k up would work. I like the 14,000k Aqua-Glo, but 10,000k might make the reds pop better.

aqua-glo is labeled 18000k but neither it nor power glo's are actualy 18000k. if you look at a black body raditation simulator like this one you'll see that most bulbs in aqaurium hobby are mislabeled don't worry about those spectral peaks just look at the colour result on the left(becuase flourescents/halides/leds are NOT black body radiators they would never match the spectral peaks perfectly and are assigned their correlated colour temp. based on appearance to the human eye.


i like the aqua-glo's though they made my piranhas red's pop (i use them with 6500k bulbs from home depot)

 

[Zander_The_RBP]

never posted the link to the black body radiator simulator here it is http://webphysics.davidson.edu/alumni/MiLee/java/bb_mjl.htm


will only work if you have java has some predetermined settings you can click OR you can drag the wavelength and it will give you your colour temp and what that looks like to the human eye i found it very handy