Adequate Lighting

Hi

I am helping one of my friends to get his tank going again, but I'm not sure how much light we need. He doesn't want a planted tank. He's going to use artificial plants and it's going to be a community aquarium.

The tank is 2.2m x 64cm x 81cm (depth). He fabricated an aluminium hood for the tank and we already have one 40W powerglo fluorescent tube + ballast. He would like to stick to fluorescent lighting if possible. He's looking for a blue-ish colour, so I thought we can combine the powerglo with a marine blue or something like that? Will two 40W tubes provide enough light or do we need more?

Thanx
Geoff

 

So you just want some lighting to view the fish ? is the tank 81cm high ? At that height i would still go t5 to get some decent penetration.

 

That's my main concern. The penetration power of those tubes. We are students, so we don't have a lot of money to work with:smile1: Yes, the tank is 81cm high and we basically just want enough lighting to view the fish clearly. I thought T5's are fluorescent tubes. What's the difference?

 

T5`s basically just has higher lumen per watt, they are not actually that expensive, dual ballst that can run 2 globes (54w 1.2m) is +/-R180, and osram tubes about R65 per tube.

 

Whell if you want to save money just use CFL's. You do not need ballast and all that nonsense. Not sure if they come in a blue though.

The marine Glo is expensive but do give the fish a nice look.

 

Where do you stay Geoff? I have spare 39w T5 tubes lying around that i'll let go very cheaply

 

Without real plants and too much light you might land up with algae blooms.

 

I stay in Cape Town.

I think i'm going to stick with what we have for now. Maybe just add one or two tubes. I can allways change it later.

Thanx for the advice!

 

Lightning

I have added two fluorescent tubes(36W) to my tank via a suspended light fitting one is blue and the other is a daylight tube,since I have done this it seems that there is a lot of algae growing out of control,this did not happen when I only used the blue light,Should I change the daylight to blue,or what about red or green? Please help.See pics for setup

 

I think I said this earlier in the week:

Can you give us the kelvin rating of the daylight globe please?

 

Waar gaan ek die kelvin rating sien?

 

On the box or on the globe.

 

It only says L36W/765 on the white
and L36W/67 on the blue

 

Do a 50% water change today, and turn the blue light off for 2 weeks and see what difference it makes

 

I will try this and see how it goes,there is not much plants since the malawis have destroyed them or uprooted them,looking to buy some new ones next week and redo the tank,I think its the white light causing the problems because I had only a blue one in the canopy.Is there a big difference in Aquarium tubes vs Regular ones
Thx zoom

 

Aquarium tubes rated for plant growth have the right spectrum of lighting for photosynthesis to take place. Check on the globe boxes that the spectrum is peaking aroung the 400 and 700 marks.

I know the blue light gives off good visual light.. but this won't help with plant growth

 

I just bought 2 regular Osram Tubes when I fitted the new pendant contraption,do you think this is the problem