Hi All,
Thank you in advance. Hopefully this is an easy question. What is the
most important part of lighting a tank? Is it watts, color, lumes...
The reason I ask is I have a flat back hex 55 gallon tank. I don't
think my plants are getting enough light. I have 2 40 watt bulbs on it
now. Any suggestions??

Thanks,
Kent

Lumens are the most important - but as long as you stick to fluorescent
lighting you can just think of this as watts since the wattage of a
bulb is usually easier to find. And yes, your tank probably could use
some more light.

There are two solutions for you to get healthy growing plants in your
situation. The cheapest is to change your plants. Anubias and java fern
will both do fine in 1.45 watts per gallon as will several other low
light plants. The other solution is to get your lighting up to between
2 and 4 watts per gallon. Ways of doing this are to either replace your
lighting completely with something in the 120 - 200 watt range or to
just add a second fixture if the top of your tank has room for it.

-Daniel

If you choose to upgrade your lighting and are willing to try anything,
I would suggest you suspend a MH pendant above the tank. One 175 watt
would do nicely and they go especially well with hex tanks IMO. MH
lights seem to penetrate deeper tanks better too.

On 2005-04-14, Kent wrote:
Hi All,
Thank you in advance. Hopefully this is an easy question. What is the
most important part of lighting a tank? Is it watts, color, lumes...
The reason I ask is I have a flat back hex 55 gallon tank. I don't
think my plants are getting enough light. I have 2 40 watt bulbs on it
now. Any suggestions??


http://www.aquariaplants.com/lighting.htm
http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Tech/

--
"I have to decide between two equally frightening options.
If I wanted to do that, I'd vote." --Duckman

On 14 Apr 2005 09:45:56 -0700, "dfreas" wrote:

Lumens are the most important - but as long as you stick to fluorescent
lighting you can just think of this as watts since the wattage of a
bulb is usually easier to find. And yes, your tank probably could use
some more light.

There are two solutions for you to get healthy growing plants in your
situation. The cheapest is to change your plants. Anubias and java fern
will both do fine in 1.45 watts per gallon as will several other low
light plants. The other solution is to get your lighting up to between
2 and 4 watts per gallon. Ways of doing this are to either replace your
lighting completely with something in the 120 - 200 watt range or to
just add a second fixture if the top of your tank has room for it.

-Daniel


I have 5 tanks, 10gal, 29gal & 75gal, all the lighting for these tanks
is less than 1.5watts per gallon. After losing my planting in my
first tank (75gal), I learned about "Low light plants." One vendor
sold assorted plants just for low light conditions. I bought a large
collection (via internet, no LFS) and couldn't be happier (2 years
later). One advantage to low light plants, no need to worry about
aging flourescents, so long as the light up they are adequate.

dick