Well... whether you're right or you're wrong... I'll buy into it because
you stated your case well. I just wish I would have participated in this
conversation 2 weeks ago before I bought the lights for my 75 gal. tank.

--
Craig Brye
University of Phoenix Online

" wrote in message
om...
The Tropica website lists a ton of plants. You'll see many descriptions
like.... "this specie falls into the 'high light' catergory like other
red
plants". I obviously didn't copy this word for word, but
generalizations
like that are riddled throughout the Tropica website.

The Kasselmann book also gives many such generalizations. E. Osiris for
example, where she states the red/brown color "...develop under intense
light".

I'm just curious because your statements blew my entire "red plant"
theories! I'm not a chemist, so I take what I read/hear to heart. This
is
why I'm fairly confused at the moment.
Craig Brye
University of Phoenix Online

I know Claus and Kasslemann personally. So I have no issues going head
to head with them on the issue either. I've stated why their
observations occured.

Now it's time for them or others to say why I have good color at low
light with red plants...................and why I can have red color
at deep depths but green at higher depths and why most red plants are
low light plants.

I have not found any plant that does not do well at 2w/gal which is
often the low end iof the lighting spectrum these days.

Thing is.......2w/gal of NO FL light was "high light" 9-10 years ago!
So when much of the books/species write ups were written, that was the
case.

But people seem to think "more light is better". Not true at all.
There's a range of lighting that is best and easiest to deal with.
This is for all plants. There might be one or two that are finicky
that we may run into, but 99.9% of the time, the needs are similar to
other plants.
At least with most of the 300 or so species we keep right now.
If that is not enough to play with, well, you must have a lot of tanks
and do a lot of work on planted tanks.

I think the average aquarist can figure things out themselves on this
issue.
If I can do it at moderate to low light consisently, and have
excellent color and health, is high light really required?
No.

Claus said most people's tanks had trace deficencies when he came
here, he did not say "not enough light". I'd been adding 5x the
recommended amounts of traces. People felt 0.1ppm of Fe was a good
amount at the time, I had 1.0ppm depending on which test kit used and
time after dosing etc.
People thought excess traces in and of themselves would cause algae.

These days, people add a lot more traces in their CO2 enriched plant
tanks.
Folks are slow to realize that less light is fine, 2-3w/gal is plenty
for any plant you might want. PC/MH's are going to have even more
light so you can go lower on these.

Regards,
Tom Barr