Will this light work for freshwater plants?

[honda237]

I am purchasing a tank that was used for saltwater with corals and I am going to use it for freshwater. Will this light be fine for south american cichlids and will it grow live plants? He said the bulbs are pretty new. I plan on converting over to plant light bulbs in the near future but I want to know if the bulbs will work for now for live plants and freshwater fish.

This is what the guy told me about the light:

Odyssey 192 watt ( 2- 96 watt bulbs) Power compact light with led moon lights. It was set up as a salt water tank for that time and the light has a 10,000 K bulb and a 430nm actinic bulb (blue)

any help will be great.

 

[thacarter546]

Im using a similiar set-up on my 55 and it does pretty well. I have 130 watts 10k + actinic and I have java fern, wisteria, and anacharis all doing very well in my tank. Not my first choice in bulbs but I got the fixtures for 8 bucks a piece (corallife pc)

I know not the hardest pants to keep alive, but I have pool filter sand as substrate, its overstocked and has quite a bit of surface dsruption from the filters (penguin 350, aquatech 30-60, and Rena Filstar xp3) I am using DIY CO2 on the output of the rena and the plants on that side are growing signifigantly faster. I dont use ferts as I am too broke for those.

 

[mdb_talon]

It may work, but definetely suited for saltwater and not freshwater plants. The light itself is fine, but the bulbs not ideal. If you dont want to spend anything you can probably get by, but growth wont be so good on the plants. If you could replace a bulb you could gain a lot of benefit replacing the actinic with a bulb with a low kelvin rating like 5000k.

 

[honda237]

Ok, that sounds good. Ya I don't want to spend much right now but in the future I will switch everything around.

 

[Err]

Also I have notice that actinic lighting in FW seems to make brown algae show up. Maybe its just my water, but every time I put that bulb in to add a twinge of color BA is just a day or two away.

 

[anhtu402]

if you want cheap lighting, you should get them from aquatraders.com My tanks grew beautifully for at least 2 years now with their bulbs and supplies. For freshwater plants, you need the bulbs to be at 6700K . Good luck!

 

[honda237]

thats a nice tank, i already get brown algea in my tanks. I am going to stick with what it comes with then change it when i have some more money.