2lucky

Hello again guys.
My parents have been nagging me, "you need to get some plants in that tank.." i always say "We need to get a proper light in there before I can even think about growing plants!"

So yeah, I'm looking for lighting for my 107G, it's has 1cm thick glass, about 50cm high, 60cm wide, and 120cm long.
I'm really confused about what sort of lighting to get, I need something that will be strong enough that it can reach the bottom of the tank.

I also want to get into growing plants, so lighting that will be good enough for medium to medium-high light plants should be a good start??

I've had people give me links to lighting sites but there are sooo many different options. It would be really helpful if someone could give me an example of the type of lighting I would need!
I dont want to spend a fortune! about $200AU, feel free to tell me if i'm a bit unrealistic here!

Thanks everyone.

navyscuba

Well I'm not a plant guru but I'm starting also. I have collected info from this site.
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/lighting/
Good Luck.

2lucky

Thanks.
I'd really love to hear from someone with a similiar size tank as mine and what lighting they have used.
When I was very beginner and collecting all the supplies for my tank I bought a 1200mm 36W flourescent tube. It read on the packet allows plants photosynthesis blah, blah. I have now learnt that 36w is no where near enough to grow plants, how they can right that on their packaging i dont know...

MPrudent

I have a 125G planted tank. I run 4X 96W compact fluorescent lights from AHSupply and 2X 42W t5 coralife F/W fixtures. The t5's have 2 bulbs, 1 colormax and one 6700k in each fixture. The CF's are 6700k daylight bulbs. the t5's turn on one hour before the cf's come on and turn off one hour after the cf's turn off. I have the cf's on for about 7.5 hours. This amount of lighting would be too much for your tank unless you plan on pressurized co2 or fertilizing. A good amount of light for your tank without getting too "high-tech" would be about 1.5-2 watts per gallon of compact fluorescent, t5, or t5-HO lighting. Catalina Aquarium makes great inexpensive lights for planted tanks. If you do your research and spend some time shopping online you can get a great fixture and not spend a fortune.

2lucky

Thanks MPrudent. That was a great help.
Ive read about DIY CO2 systems on the net, would you reccommend them?
Also, I've just read Jack sos's post on spotlights instead of flourescents. Would a couple of them be good for mine?
Sorry about all the questions, I'm still trying to get my head around everything!
Thanks guys

MPrudent

I wouldn't recommend DIY co2 on a tank that size. It's too much to manage and in my opinion, too hard to achieve a constant/steady/reliable source of co2. I have never used spotlights so I can't recommend them. They are cheap so they might be worth a try and not too much of a costly mistake if they don't work or create and algae farm.

2lucky

I have found a reflector and globe package on the internet for a very good price. It's 4 times 54W HO compact flourescent with white globes. So that would be about 2wpg!
What do you all say about that for package growing plants?
Thanks

aquarist48

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/my...ll_Plants/25/0

http://www.plantgeek.net/plantguide_viewer.php?id=84

Good morning. I listed a couple of links (in case you haven't seen them) that you may find helpful. Best of luck.
Ken

mathas

Is "globe" an Australian term for any light bulb, or do you specifically mean a spherical bulb?

2lucky

Sorry, i mean bulb, thats me getting confused with all the lighting terms there is out there.
I've heard that white bulbs arent the best for growing plants cos they're not close to the sun's spectrem or something like that.
Thanks guys

2lucky

I also found another more costly unit. It's a 4ft quade T5 4*54W 14k. The T5 globes will be better for my deeper tank right? Would something like this be the best choice for me?
Thanks

MPrudent

14000 kelvin might not be the color temperature your looking for in a planted tank. I would recommend a bulb that is somewhere between 5000-10000k. Those are considered daylight bulbs. I tried to run 13000k metal halides when I first planted my tank and quickly realized that was not the bulb for me. It was too "blue" in my opinion. Here is a good thread on bulb temps http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/li...0000k-bad.html or http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/li...ht-needed.html

2lucky

Question: would a t5 lighting fixture that states to be 48" 2*54W take 2*80 watts bulbs instead? Or are the fixtures designed only to take the one kind of bulb?

Also would a power compact 4*55W PL light be good? Its brand new and very cheap and i was wondering why its so cheap!
Thanks!

mathas

The ballast should have a rating on it that indicates how much power it can safely handle. In general, fixtures ship usually ship with the largest bulbs they can support, so your chances of a significant wattage increase just by changing the bulbs are pretty slight.

I'm not sure what PL stands for, but the answer is maybe. As with almost everything, there are varying degrees of quality. Maybe it's priced low because it's low quality and poorly made, maybe it's on clearance because that vendor has stopped carrying that product line and wants to liquidate inventory.

There's no way to know if it's good or not just based on "power compact 4*55W PL light." If you can post a link, that would help.

2lucky

thanks everyone for your help,
one last question: i'm wondering about the types of bulbs i'd need for my deeper tank. are t5 HO in daylight aquarium bulbs suitable?

Neji

Oh, you have a bigger tank?

Well T5 HO lights are much brighter and probably 100 W and 20,000k or 18,000k would be good I don't know much about bigger tanks. The biggest tank I have gotten to was a 55 gallon tank.

Do you have the T5 HO light fixture? Or no? If not, then you should definitely get one of them