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Re: Sufficient Lighting
Karen Randall wrote:
>This is another area where many people seem to be falling into the
>common American faulty thinking, "If some is good, more must be
>better". While 15W on a 20G tank is certainly on the dim side, 80-
>100W is _WAY_ in the other direction. I see no good reason to
>use light levels this high. I have _never_ failed with a plant for
>lighting reasons with light in the 3W/G range in a tank of less than
>22" in depth.
<snip>
>Personally, I run the two 20H tanks that we have with 40W over
>each. (easily accomplished with 2 20W strip lights) Both have
>_excellent_ growth, and contain many species including several
>"high light" species like Bacopa, Acorus, Lilaeopsis and Rotala
>macrandra. All of these plants grow well enough to require regular
>division, and are lush and green.
This would be a good opportunity to repost my question of several
months back concerning how much light is attenuated by the glass
or plexiglass strip in our stock aquarium canopies. Has anyone
removed the plexiglass or glass safety strip on their hoods and then
operated the lights successfully with a conventional strip reflector
and conventional fluorescent sockets? Waterproof endcaps would
not fit under my "Double-Bright Strip Reflector" (made by Penn
Plax, I think) and would not be practical for my set-up.
TIA,
Jonathan in Maryland (cloudy and cool today)