Re: [APD] Light Bulbs -- Actinic illumination and Plants

["S. Hieber" <shieber at yahoo_com>]

I don't disagree with any of this or Tom's comments -- I
expressed my own doubts in my post. it's Hovenac's claim
that seems perplexing. The article is also posted on the
Marineland web site. Specifically, he claims:

"Plant lamps are designed to emit light at the red
wavelengths to duplicate the job of the sun. But too much
red color can cause aquatic plants to grow tall and thin.
For best results, use a daylight (5,000 K) lamp such as an
Aquasun, Ultralume 50 or Chroma 50 in combination with an
actinic white or actinic day lamp. The actinic day or white
lamp is a mixture of 50% actinic (blue light) and 50%
daylight."

The use of cool white bulbs might even come closer to what
Hovenac is suggesting than, say, 5000 K bulbs.

Also, by "actinic day" and "actinic white," perhaps he is
only referring to 10000 K or 12000 K bulbs. Still the claim
seems somewhat novel.

Scott H.
--- Laura Burbage <leuhrich at yahoo_com> wrote:
> Tom Barr wrote:
> 
> "Several folks over the hort labs here also say
> similar things
> and use cool whites and they have plenty of $ for
> pricey bulbs
> if they worked better."
> 
> 
> A fellow in the botany greenhouse here told me that
> they use 1/2 cool white and 1/2 warm white in the
> growth chambers (which are sealed and receive no other
> light)
> 
> Granted these are for land plants, but I'm assuming
> that if these were the improper bulbs for botanical
> growth, the correct bulbs would certainly be written
> into the grants.
> 
> They do use metal halide bulbs in the extended
> daylight greenhouse, but those are way above the
> plants.  The distances in the growth chambers are more
> like those we see in aquaria (of course, without the
> water, which is another issue).  They also have a
> gazillion bulbs in the chambers, and don't usually
> worry about algae.  So I suppose it's possible that
> they just blast the plants with light and they get
> enough of the right spectra.


=====
S. Hieber

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