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Increasing lighting
Hello all,
After plenty of delays I'm just finishing up my new, improved lighting hood
and am about to fire it up. I'll be going from a single tube to a four-tube
fixture and am wondering whether I'm asking for trouble (read: ALGAE) if I
make this jump all at once. Does it make any sense to go from one bulb to two,
let the plants "catch up" to the new conditions (and let me figure out how
much I'll need to increase CO2 and fertilizer to keep up), then add another
bulb and later another? Or should I just go buy a bunch of new plants in an
effort to consume the added light to good purposes?
Tank is 30-gal., soil/laterite/vermiculite/gravel substrate, DIY CO2, water pH
6.5, 5 dKH, 3 SAE's (2.8" long), 4 black-skirt tetras, 6 bleeding heart tetras,
4 neons, 4 mountain minnows, 3 kuhli loaches, one skunk loach; 4 huge, happy
Java ferns; lots of plain old green hygro and Cabomba, both spindly but
rapidly growing; lots of happy Elodea; and a few pygmy chain swords that are
struggling. My goal is to have more of the "huge, happy" types and thicker
growth, as well as the opportunity to try some more demanding species such as
Crypts.
TIA for any and all ideas!
Christine in soggy Palo Alto