"WhiskerFish" wrote in message
news
I have purchased a split glass cover and am prepared to build
a hood from scratch to meet the needs of the lighting system. What I
am looking for is recommendations for a maintenance free Long term
lighting system that will be both natural in appearance for the fish
veiwing and healthy for the plants. Money while always a concern is
secondary to getting it right the first time. Heat generation for
summer months is a concern. Tank Dimentions are 21"H x 12 wide x 48
long. I am a capable electrician and carpenter so manufacturing /
assembly are a possibility.

No I have not finished reading the info available at the Krib
but will do so this week as part of my decision process.

Thanks a bunch for any info you care to share!

I wouldn't profess to be an expert on this but, as a general rule you need
roughly 2-3W per gallon if you can manage it. That would mean you are
looking for somewhere around 120W - which would be 3 fluorescent tubes. You
could also look at the "T5" systems which are supposed to be a lot brighter
& give generally more "bang for your buck".

Other options would be Metal Halides but these don't fit in a hood but are
suspended over the tank.

Key thing to remember is that everything must be in balance - you can have
too much light - if you do you'll get Algae. The determining factor here is
the CO2 level in the tank - if you don't have CO2 then you probably don't
want more than 120W - I have a similar size tank with only 80W & no CO2 & a
variety of plants grow very well. Plants need light, CO2 & Nutrients to
grow - skimp on any one of these and things will go awry. Obviously there
are some plants that will grow better in low light than others so you need
to select plants according to your lighting.

There are a vast variety of tubes on the market these days that give
different light spectrums some of which are more suited to plants than
others. There are also tubes which will enhance the colours of your fish.

Also make sure you have your lights on for a constant amount of time every
day - 12 hours is a rough guide. Easy way to manage this is with a timer.
You can vary this depending on how well your plants (or your Algae!) is
doing - you can go down to 10 or up to say 14 hours depending on what works.

Other things to consider when trying to grow plants are the substrate and
the filtration. Under gravel filters are generally not recommended although
some people do seem to manage quite well with these - I never have. You can
spend a fortune on special substrate soils etc and/or things like under
substrate heating. Personally, I just have plain old sand in the bottom of
my tanks & the plants I have grow well in it (with the aid of root tabs &
liquid fertilizer). If you are in the States Fluorite seems to be the
substrate of choice.

I have two tanks, one as described above and another which is deeper - 24"
of glass - over that I've got four x 40W tubes & it has CO2 on it as well -
its positivly overgrown at the moment - lights are on for about 13 hours on
that one.

HTH

I.