SereneReyn

I just bought a light strip on ebay. i have a 72g bowfront, and the lightstrip will be a total of 108watts... 6400K. Plus it's in a bright room... this will be good for a low-light plant set up, right? i don't want to have to bother with CO2... (i've read some, just wanna confirm)

Thanks!

lilsoccakid

that gives u exactly 1.5 WPG. i think this would be alright for low light plants. i would recommend the product seachem flourish excel. this is a liquid u add to the tank, and provides the tank with carbon dioxide in a different form. its very easy just to add id every 3 days or so, and they say on the website if the quality of a CO2 injector is a 10, then the use of excel can be rated at about a 7. good luck and enjoy!

COBettaCouple

What's the color spectrum of the tubes?

SereneReyn

uh, in my ignorance, i thought that the Kelvin (sp) scale referred to the spectrum whereas a reef light of around 10,000K is a bluish light, and something way at the other end is more red? is this not accurate? gosh, guess i need to read more to understand that part.

and thanks lil for the product advice!

COBettaCouple

The K is the light temperature. Higher is more intense. Most tubes will have a color spectrum diagram on the box (or webpage).

SereneReyn

oooh, well it hasn't arrived yet, but the description said "for freshwater planted aquariums"...

thanks for enlightening me...

COBettaCouple

Well, I'm just learning about lights myself and you'll find a lot of members here who know way more about them than me. It's amazing all the light types out there, just in FL.

LOL.. One of our Betta knows about the spectrums somehow though. He was visibly stressed and angry with us when he had a blue-spectrum FL light, but happy as can be with a yellow one. These fish!

GreenMan13

I have been researching lights like crazy recently. Color temp is related to the color spectrum but it is hard to measure color temperature uniformly from company to company since it is based off what color it is in relations to a black-body radiation. 6400K should be fine as it should have a wide range in the color spectrum. I'm using 4-14watt 5500K bulbs on my 55 gal tank and have had a lot of growth so far with low light plants so I'm sure you will be fine.