"Dave Millman" wrote in message
...
At our last fish club meeting, a member proudly described how he had
just
put 110 watts over his 20 gallon plant tank, because an LFS employee
told
him, "The more light, the better." He doesn't have CO2 or dose
nutrients-the same fish store told him that "We don't do that in our
tanks,
and the plants are fine." A few of us tried to explain his mismatch
light
with nutrients, but he was too excited about his new light kit to hear
any
of it.

So I am writing a talk on "Getting Started with Planted Aquaria," with a

focus on picking the right combinations of these important issues. Tom
Barr
has done a great job recently of describing successful low-light setups,

and his Estimative Index method is a great starting point for
high-light.

I have tried to create one diagram describing the relationship of light,

CO2 and nutrients, specifically to show where the "success zones" are.
Please take a look:

http://www.svas.info/Newsletter/success-zone.html

Please note, this is the first draft of the diagram. I am looking for
input
on the whole concept, and on the shape of the "success zone" itself, and

the right values for the vertical and horizontal axes. Or feel free to
say
the whole thing is wrong!

Thank for your help.


Well i'm fairly new to the aquarium world, ive just started adding plants
and i'm in the process of building my own canopy. one thing i think you
should mention is the type of light. if you have 2w/gallon of incandescent
i dont think youll have much success. i just bought a combination of
flourescents, two cool whites and two 41k 'designer' tubes. i'm hoping it
will work better than my one power glow.