Added 40 Plants

[mattbeau]

so I replaced the plants I killed before and added about 20 anacharis and 20 money wart (its looking pretty green in there now

before the anacharis had no problem with growing and reproducing, the money wart looks like it is pretty durable too.

I also picked up two coralife nutrigrow 15 watt lamps

alas I need to retrofit the hood now to use both of them

thinking of making a DIY co2

I know the general rule is 2 wpg for lighting a planted tank, if I'm using full spectrum lighting at 1.5 wpg should this be adaquite, it seems that the lfs didnt cary anything over 15 watts in the t-8 size, is this normal?

 

[houndour]

yes it's normal. Normally the bigger wattage the longer the tubes are so won't fit the tank.

The only way is more tubes or look into t5 lighting. This are smaller but higher wattage. For example I have a 24Watt interpet t5 over my 5 gallon and a single 55Watt over my 20 gallon.

The advantage of adding more tubes rather than having one single light is you can mix and match different types of light, and also if you needed to lower your wattage for whatever reason, you can switch them off individually.

 

[mattbeau]

actually today I shopped around a bit

I found a power compact housing that is made to fit catalina compact lights. which gives me 55 watts or 2.75 wpg

I went with the 10,000k ultra-sunlight type tube, wow is it bright B)

tommarow I will be returning the other lights and housing I picked up yesterday (thought it would hold 2 t-8s)
thanks