I agree that he definately needs more light.... I don't know where people
keep coming up with these strange wattage values from but I have NEVER seen
a 10 gallon tank with anything but a 15 watt bulb over it (unless were
talking incandescent in which case you'd do better with a flashlight). But
I definately beg to differ with regard to changing the bulb. The penn plax
bulbs that come standard in fixtures these days have almost no light in the
red spectrum. They are all blue. And as you probably know plants need both
red and blue light. The chroma 50's which are 5 dollars at wal mart are
perfect and a cheap upgrade. and yes they do sell them in sizes that fit
all the fixtures. I used to buy vitalites for 20 bucks a pop thank god I
found those bulbs. I use them in all of my tanks with excellent results.
And actually I have a ten gallon with a single 15 watt chroma 50 in it,
florite substrate, pmdd and plants grow very well in it while when I had the
stock penn plax bulb in it I could barely grow java moss. Bottom line if
wattage matters and bulb temp doesn't try placing nothing but 10,000K
actinic bulbs over your tanks.

"Robert H" wrote in message
m...
"Ben" wrote in message
...
do yourself a favor and go to wal mart or home depot and buy yourself a
sunshine bulb (not the exact name) the packaging is bright orange and
the
bulb should say "chroma 50". That will be the bast improvement you can
make
for the money. without good lighting co2 is absolutely useless. Next,
and
a little more $ buy one bag of Seachem Flourite gravel ($15). I swear
by
this stuff.Be sure to rinse it well. Throw away your old gravel. If
you
can't find it order it online. For this $20 you will make life much
much
much easier for yourself. With this equpment you should be able to
grow
alot of different plants and if you do things right in a month you
should
have a mini forest. do some reading about aquascaping to help you
decide
which plants to buy. plant fairly heavy from the start but avoid this
mistake: when you buy your plants many types will be bunched together
seperate them and plant each plant seperately.
Ben


Well, he has a 20 watt single bulb strip. I dont think the chroma 50
comes that small, but even so, replacing one bulb with another bulb
won't make any difference at all. The color of the light may improve,
but it wont help the plants any. What he needs is more light,
preferably three 20 watt bulbs, but at the least two bulbs. Do this
and you will have intesive enough light.

Read some of the articles on my WEB site, it may help you,


Robert H
http://www.aquabotanic.com