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Old January 10th, 2008  
Fish Helper
 
CFL watts per gallon?

So I'm looking into starting live plants in my 55 gallon tank and I was going to make my own top to house the lighting. I was thinking of using these CFL...N:Vision CFL. They use 14 watts but give off 60 watts of light. So if I were to use 4 of these...would that be 14 x 4 = 56 watts ~1 watt/gal or would it be 60 x 4 = 240 watts ~ 4-5 watts/gal?

The daytime lights have a temp of 5500K and I can find them for only $8 for 4.
GreenMan13 is offline  
Old January 11th, 2008  
Fish Keeper
 
the 14 watts of compact fluorescent is jsut that 14 watts. Where it says = to 60 watts of incandescant lightinf dosent matter. The CF watts matter so you would have a total of 56 watts and abotu 1 wpg.
Wolfgang8810 is offline  
Old January 11th, 2008  
Fish Master
 
Yup treat the cfl's like any other fluorescent bulb. Also fyi cfl's don't produce as much of the red spectrum, so depending on how sensitive plants you're getting you might want to add a light that peaks in red in addition to the cfl's.

I just replaced one of my tank's lights with cfl's and I love them.
0morrokh is offline  
Old January 12th, 2008  
Fish Helper
 
Thats what I thought. Thanks for the clarification though.
GreenMan13 is offline  
Old January 12th, 2008  
Fish Keeper
 
I use a Nova Extreme freshwater light. They have a special "pink" T5 bulb. The 48 inch light is 108 watts total. That would give you close to 2 watts per gallon if you're looking for moe light than the 1 watt per. I've only ben using mine for a maybe 2 months but it's worked nicely for me so far. Here's a link. http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Produc...reshwater&Np=1
BTW they don't look pink when on. They just give off a little more red spectrum. Also, avoid anything with actinics. While plants do use the blue spectrum they don't need all that. Algae will also love the actinics which is no fun lol.
Gozer_1 is offline  
Old January 12th, 2008  
Fish Master
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gozer_1 View Post
I use a Nova Extreme freshwater light. They have a special "pink" T5 bulb. The 48 inch light is 108 watts total. That would give you close to 2 watts per gallon if you're looking for moe light than the 1 watt per. I've only ben using mine for a maybe 2 months but it's worked nicely for me so far. Here's a link. http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Produc...reshwater&Np=1
BTW they don't look pink when on. They just give off a little more red spectrum. Also, avoid anything with actinics. While plants do use the blue spectrum they don't need all that. Algae will also love the actinics which is no fun lol.
Yeah that's the red spectrum bulb I was thinking of, T5. Cfl's plus a T5 is a good combo.
0morrokh is offline  
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