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Re: Plant Lights
Patrick's combo is a really good one for both the plants and the viewing of
the fish. In regular fluorescents, I like a 50:50 mix of Chroma 50 (GE
"Sunshine" -- warm) and "daylight (cooler)," with at least 2W/G.
That combo doesn't *look* as bright as the same amount of "cool whites" but
our eye is very green sensitive. The plants just reflect most of that away,
anyway. They need plenty of red and blue, which are 10X less bright to our
eyes. Often, the tubes with *lower* lumens/Watt are the best plant tubes.
[Lumens are based entirely on human vision and not photosynthetic activity.]
Avoid the specialty aquarium tubes, as they often have inappropriate
spectrum, are hideously expensive, and have very short lifetimes. Some lose
50% of their output in only six months, and have to be replaced. Standard
household/commercial lamps from Home Depot o/e keep up to 90% until they
will no longer light up (often over 10,000 hours -- about 2-3 years of
normal use).
I love the single Biax-type CFs, but have found the twister types are much
less efficient and have considerably shorter life in an aquarium hood.
Likewise the ones with three "U" tubes are very inefficient. Most of the
light hits the other tubes and is hard to reflect into the aquarium.
Wright
>From: CaptnPATSG3F at aol_com
>Reply-To: killietalk at aka_org
>To: killietalk at aka_org
>Subject: Re: Plant Lights
>Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 18:54:23 EDT
>
>I use around 3 watts per gallon CF 5500K and 6500K in a 1:1 ratio for a
>show
>tank. The tanks on my rack are lit by dual shop lights with warm white
>flourecents. This turns out to be about 2 watts per gallon
>
>patrick
>
>
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