Re: Lighting a tiny tank.

[Zxcvbob at aol_com]

IFrom: "Matt" <marius1 at gate_net> sez:
> . . .couldn't find the color temps of the bulbs at
>  Home Depot, so I went back to Living Walls and pretended I was actually
>  thinking about emptying my wallet on their light, and got to browse the
>  catalog.  The color temp was 3200.  Now, the punch line.  Will the halogen
>  have any nasty side effects, and is this color temp going to be enough to
>  maintain a planted tank?

Incandescent lamps produce very high quality light.  The CRI will be about 
100, with a continuous spectrum output like "black body" radiator.  The 
plants should like it just fine.  I grow seedlings under 3000K flourescent 
lights. 

There are a couple of things to worry about:  
The lamp will produce more heat than it does light.  This is not altogether 
bad if you can utilize the heat to warm the aquarium.  But it's gonna be hard 
to control and (of course) it will cool at night.  A 10 litre aquarium will 
not have much thermal mass, so if the lamp is the only source of heat, the 
temperature may swing daily more than you want.

Philips says that incandecent lamps do not provide enough short wavelength 
(blue) light to regulate plant growth if they are used as the sole source of 
light.  Somewhere I have their brochure about horticultural lighting; I don't 
remember the details.  They were talking about terrestrial plants, so this 
may not really apply to water plants.

3200K is gonna look kind of yellow.  You'll probably get used to it.

Best regards,
Bob

---

• Prev by Date: scholarships
• Next by Date: Re:Tiny Lights
• Prev by thread: Lighting a tiny tank.
• Next by thread: daphnia outside
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread