GreenMan13

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.

Wolfgang8810

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.

0morrokh

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.

GreenMan13

Thats what I thought. Thanks for the clarification though.

Gozer_1

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.

0morrokh

Yeah that's the red spectrum bulb I was thinking of, T5. Cfl's plus a T5 is a good combo.