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Lighting Forum for talking about freshwater aquarium lighting. Lots of topics here such as aquarium lighting for a low-lighted planted tanks, advice on picking out lights, how to maintain your fish tank lights, etc. - Aquarium Lighting - Fish Tank Light Article

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Old August 11th, 2009  
Fish Helper
 
36" T5 HO fixture for a 30G Long

Just found a killer deal for a 36" T5 HO fixture for my 30G Long tank.

It will put my WPG at 2.6 I don't want to deal with CO2. Just a simple low/med light planted tank is what I want.

I fear this will be over-kill for my tiny setup and everything would die with the lack of CO2 injection...

Any input? Kid only wants $40 for it and will be a big improvement over my 20" florescent fixture I have now keeping me at .6 WPG lol
xathine is offline  
Old August 11th, 2009  
Fish Keeper
 
2.6WPG of T5HO, especially if the reflectors are decent, is a lot of light to not use CO2. Even moreso when the tank is a "long" (i.e. shallower).

If you don't use a ridiculously small photoperiod, you may wind up with a massive algal outbreak.
mathas is offline  
Old August 11th, 2009  
Fish Helper
 
Lame.

So would it be okay to use in smaller on / off increments?

Like on for only 6-8 hours a day?

Last edited by Lucy; August 11th, 2009 at 03:31 PM. Reason: merged back to back posts, please use the edit button to add to a post :)
xathine is offline  
Old August 11th, 2009  
Fish Master
 
I agree with mathas. To put it in perspective, I used to work for a LFS that used 108W HO T5 over each planted 55 gallon tank. The 108W HO T5 were MUCH brighter than my 130W PC light that I had over my 55 at home. With decent reflectors, they really put out a ton of light. With 2 daylight spectrum bulbs over a 30 gallon, there's no way I'd try it without CO2 and ferts; IMO it would be an algae factory. However, it might work if you swap one daylight bulb for an actinic (plants can't really utilize the actinic spectrum so it would be like using lower light).
harpua2002 is offline  
Old August 11th, 2009  
Fish Helper
 
Hmm, what would the color of the light look like with the antinic?


Also, wonder how well it would fit / work for my 55g.

Last edited by xathine; August 11th, 2009 at 06:26 PM.
xathine is offline  
Old August 11th, 2009  
Fish Master
 
Probably better than you'd expect. I kept a medium light planted tank in a 45 gallon tall (36x12x24) with only a 2 foot HO T5, 2x 24W. They put out a lot of light.

Running it with one actinic and one daylight will make the tank look a little blue. You can probably mitigate that a little bit by choosing a 6700K instead of a 10000K for your daylight bulb. Just a thought.
harpua2002 is offline  
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