Newbie Questions (filter Light Plants)

[rabbut]

Well, I was actually thinking something more like this. You can get them used for about £30-£50

Plant food isn't essential IMO for a low-light tank

All the best
Rabbut

 

[supermonkey]

hi, thanks for that. i will leave the plant food for now then and see how it goes. could i ask what makes the lighting in your post different? Is it the fact that its overtank? My tank has a matching glass lid and is enclosed in a fake wall if that makes a difference.

 

[rabbut]

Well, the unit you have linked to is just the ballast and igniter/starter unit. You have to push the end caps on it onto the ends of the tube, and plug it in to get it working. They need to be mounted to something and a reflector added. With the unit I linked to, the ballasts are hidden, wires tidies, mounting taken care of and the reflectors pre-fitted. The igniter/starters aren't used in the luminares as they are on more efficient electronic ballasts.

As it were, the luminare is "batteries included ready to go" where as with yours "batteries aren't included and some assembly is required"

All the best
Rabbut

 

[supermonkey]

right ok. i must seem really stupid, but the lighting has been the steepest learning curve for me...
the luminaire sounds a lot easier, but having said that, i dont mind having to mount something above myself, its the other stuff that could be problematic

so do u think this will work ok sat on top of the glass lid? I wouldnt want my fish to jump out or something.

 

[rabbut]

Yer, will be fine. The glass will need regular cleaning though, it's an algae magnet

 

[supermonkey]

Hi all, I'm sure this is beginning to get frustrating for you all, but I am still really struggling with this lighting business. The suggestions above are great, but I can't seem to be able to find anything like this at a reasonable price!

Update - visited pets@home today and they advised not go with a luminaire. The controllers look ok now I've had a close look in person, but Im not brave enough to drill into the glass lid so would need to fix either at the front or back of the tank. Would this be a problem or would I need two to get even light?

 

[supermonkey]

ok, i think i can answer my own question on this. I'm thinking I will superglue some plastic brackets to the glass lid, and then use these and some hooks or something to attached to the end caps. This would then allow me to have the light central

 

[supermonkey]

any more thoughs anyone? thanks

 

[rabbut]

What were Pets@Home's reasons for not getting a luninare (other than they don't stock them as far as I'm aware)?

 

[supermonkey]

What were Pets@Home's reasons for not getting a luninare (other than they don't stock them as far as I'm aware)?

Not much reasoning to be honest - just that they are more suitable for a larger tank and that it would more expensive. He initially said go for a luminaire as he assumed the tank was bigger than it is.

 

[rabbut]

I love some of the stuff some P@H employees come up with. Actually, they output a lot more light than other types, making them more suited to smaller tanks. The effective light over a tank decreases with volume, even if you have the same "watts per gallon" over the water. I'm not sure how this works, so I'll let one of the planted tank guy's explain. Basically though, the larger the tank, the less watts per gallon and ultimately light tubes you require for your set-up

 

[OldMan47]

I'm not really a plant guy Rabbut but larger tanks need more light. The ratio comes down not because of some magic ingredient. Have a look at 2 of the 4 ft long tanks. A 55 gallon is the same depth and the same length as a 90 gallon but the light over the tank is still going to be 4 feet long and run in a single line from one end to the other. The light intensity as it enters the water will be the same for both tanks too. The plants have no idea how much water is nearby, they only know how much light they are getting. With a tank that deep, the light spreads enough to illuminate at least a foot wide patch of substrate or a little more. That 55 is only a foot from front to back so the whole thing gets that much light. The 90 is more like 18 inches front to back so there will be small areas in the very front and in the very back that don't get quite as much light. If I have 110 watts over the tanks, the WPG on the 55 is 2.0 and the WPG on the 90 is only 1.22. It looks like the 90 has a lot lower light in terms of WPG but if you really look at it from the plant's perspective, plants in either tank get the same amount of light except a plant that is not under the light in the 90. Most people don't plant a tank solid from front to back with the same plant so a bit of judicious placement of the plants means you can grow almost the same identical plants in both tanks. At the extreme edges in the 90 you have the choice of lower light plants or another small fixture to fill in the light that is missing at the front or back edge.
The extreme in the other direction is when you hear that a small tank needs a high WPG to grow anything. Lets go really small and have a coffee cup sized tank. A really big coffee cup might hold a pint of water which is 1/8 of a gallon. Now put a kid's bedroom night light over the coffee cup at 2 or 3 watts. Any plant guy at all will tell you that you can grow anything with 5 WPG and you just went all the way to over 15 WPG so you can grow anything, right? Get real, a plant growing with no light source but a kid's night light will die fast.
These are just illustrations to make the concepts make some sense, not to recommend any particular light setup for a particular size tank.

 

[supermonkey]

thanks guys....I will keep an eye out on ebay and hope something comes up soon...

 

[waterdrop]

Very nice little set of illustrations there OM. I had read other discussions about light distribution below the source but not quite thought about them from the angle your examples gave.. quite good! It helps me make a little more sense of the interest in different aftermarket reflectors one can slide behind the tube up in the hood.

It also reinforces my feeling that lighting is one of the core skill sets (along with carbon delivery, general nutrition and algae!) of the planted side of things. With lighting it sometimes seems easy to get complacent, but for each of us there may be more intricacies to be better understood.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Dave Spencer]

I'm completely baffled by lighting.....

For a 100l tank, 2 x T8 lamps the length of the tank will give you enough light to grow any plant you wish. It is that simple. Buy tubes that look good to your eye, and forget all this expensive plant specific lamp stuff. Lampspecs is a great place to start for cheap lamps. Lamps with a colour rendering index (CRI) of 9 are perfect for giving true colours to the eye. You will see this number in the specification of the lamp on Lampspecs.

Then you need to consider carbon supplement. My guess, and it is a guess, is that you will need some form. I always use pressurised CO2, as there is barely a case where pressurised is not superior to liquid carbon, other than cost. In your case, I suspect you want to keep it simple. Buy a liquid carbon source such as Flourish Excel or EasyCarbo and dose as per the bottle.

For all other nutrient requirements, buy a bottle of Tropica TPN+ and dose as per the bottle. You don`t even need a nutrient rich substrate.

Check list to start a successful planted tank:

2 x T8 lamps the length of the tank, on a timer for around 8 hours.

Flourish Excel or easyCarbo.

TPN+

Planted tanks can be that easy. The hardest part by far is getting them to look nice.

Dave.