What lights to use?

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alexanian

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Sep 5, 2011
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Damascus
Hello everyone,
I'm designing my own top/hood and I need some help with what lights to use on my tank. The tank is 175x60x70 cm ( 68.9"L x 23.6"W x 27.5"H ) which makes it almost 200G. I'm planning on some low maintenance light planted tank so no co2 and no dosing. Plants will mostly be hornwort, amazon swords, anacharis and maybe some anubias and vals. My substrate is sand over a very little bit of gravel. I'm thinking about maybe putting a clay potting mix under it in a few places.
I was thinking about putting 6 T5 light bulbs - (3 x 6700K and 3x 10000K bulbs). Is this an overkill and am i just asking for algae?
 
alexanian said:
Hello everyone,
I'm designing my own top/hood and I need some help with what lights to use on my tank. The tank is 175x60x70 cm ( 68.9"L x 23.6"W x 27.5"H ) which makes it almost 200G. I'm planning on some low maintenance light planted tank so no co2 and no dosing. Plants will mostly be hornwort, amazon swords, anacharis and maybe some anubias and vals. My substrate is sand over a very little bit of gravel. I'm thinking about maybe putting a clay potting mix under it in a few places.
I was thinking about putting 6 T5 light bulbs - (3 x 6700K and 3x 10000K bulbs). Is this an overkill and am i just asking for algae?
Click to expand...

Using a 10,000k bulb in a freshwater tank is always asking for algae. If you aren't using co2, high quality substrate, and dosing ferts having six T-5's is also asking for algae even with a 27.5" height. If I were you I'd use two 6,500k and one 5,500k T-5's. That should be just about as much light as you should go.

Sent from my SGS4 Active
 
Thank you. Yea I had a feeling I was going over board :) It's just that my plants always brown up and die ( not in this tank in another 40g tank with one regular T8 bulb), so I wanted to rule lights out as a factor in this tank. Also worth mentioning is that I plan to put individual switches for the bulbs so they won't always be all on. I could turn on the 3 6500k for 12 hours and the 10000k for 4-5 hours a day for example. ( or 5500K for 12 and 6500k for 4 hours per your suggestion ) Also the bulbs don't go full length of the tank since they're 60cm long, so 3 will go full length.
 
muskieboy said:
If it was my tank I would use 10w led flood lights from ebay.
Click to expand...

I can't get anything from ebay I'm in Syria. I don't think we have those here on the market. We have similar to this only it's metal halide and they make too much heat. Metal halide won't work for me because of those hot summers we have here. LED would be great but we don't have any LED lights bright enough for plants here. All we have is chinese stuff.
Even T5 bulbs were hard to find.
 
Any more opinions? I feel like I maybe haven't explained it well so I made a quick sketch of how I was planning on setting the lights up. I do feel like it's too much since I will be using low light and low maintenance plants, so I'd appreciate ur suggestions.

lights setup.jpg

lights setup.jpg
 
I would go with just 6,500k bulbs. Like said the 10ks are just asking for trouble. I have one little 6,500k t10 in a ghetto reflector I made on my 90 it's kept my Anubis alive for 4+ months now.


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+1

Lighting is the easiest variable to control. < lighting = < nutrients < c02.

2x 6500k t5's are fine. If you want to use a moonlight make sure its dim enough at night so it doesn't disturb photosynthesis and create even more algae and cause problems with the plants.

Its easy to grow plants but growing algae is even easier but much harder to get rid of and control after the fact!

*So take it from me*
<> start with low light and add more if need be<>




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Cheap way to decrease nitrates and keep your fish healthy: http://monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=504763
 
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