My 46g bowfront had only 1.3 wpg on it for quite a while with fairly
good results. I kept many plants that required low to medium light.
What I think must have helped tremendously was that the substrate was
a light colored sand (but not white) with Laterite covering the
bottom. It reflected great deal of light back up to the plants. Yes,
there are drawbacks to this substrate (ie. possible anaerobic areas
and some fish don't color up as nicely).

With this setup, I didn't need to fertilize much and the plants didn't
need to be trimmed more than twice a month.

Now that I have switched to CF, and CO2, I will probably change the
substrate to Flourite or Eco-Complete. But the sand served me well
with the low light phase.

Cris


On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 15:24:41 -0400, "Harry Muscle"
wrote:

I'm gonna be modifying my All Glass hood soon to get more lighting for my
new 55G tank. I'm hoping to achieve a tank that gives me ok growth (ie:
trim once a month or two). One that won't require CO2 (although I will be
using Flourish Excel). I have fertilizers on hand, so I don't mind using
those, but I would like to have some room for error since this will be my
first planted tank. I don't mind sticking with low/medium light plants if
this means I get a low maintenance tank that doesn't require hours of
work/testing/trimming every week.

So the question is ... is 1.6wpg enough for such a tank? Having only 1.6wpg
would allow me to stick with a cheaper T8 lighting system instead of going
with T5 or compacts in order to fit everything in the All Glass hood. Btw,
a fully DIY hood is not an option unfortunately.

Thanks,
Harry