Will these bulbs work?

[dartos]

I have a newly setup 65 gallon tank and I would really like to make it a planted tank. The tank came with a 48" Eclipse bulb that I have no idea what the wattage or spectrum coverage is. But this bulb is not yet my concern. What I am wondering about are four bulbs that my wife's grandfather used for growing plants indoors. The ballasts hold 2 18" bulbs each and all four are Sylvania Gro-Lux bulbs. I do not know their wattage however the ballasts looks to be regulated for 15 W.

My question is whether these bulbs would be ok for growing plants in our aquarium or not. I have tried a Google search on them and this is what I got:

The lamp radiates energy in the far-red (700-800nm), red (600-700nm) and blue (400-500nm) regions of the spectrum... Color Temperature = 3400K.

I realize that the color temperature should be ok but I am wondering if because the bulbs were not intended for an aquarium, whether their light could penetrate the water in a way to help the plants grow. Our tank is 24" high which is great for the angels and discus that we want for the tank, but not so great for light.

Any help with this will be greatly appreciated. I am really hoping that I will not have to go out and buy new bulbs, otherwise I might have to go with fake plants for the time being.

 

[guppygirl]

3400K is pretty low for plants.
Plus 30 watts is VERY low wattage for a 65 tank. Chances are your 48" bulb is a 32 watt or a 40 watt also, still not enough. Any way you look at it, you're going to have to get a lighting upgrade.
Have you considered AH supply for a cf retrofit kit? AH supply

 

[dartos]

Thanks for the reply and link guppygirl.

I have decided to use the current ballasts that I have right now and upgrade the bulbs to those that are more efficient for growing plants which will eventually give me 100 W. I realize this is still not optimum for a planted tank, however I eventually plan on upgrading the lights, possibly with the link that you gave or something from my LFS.

I took my ballasts into my LFS and he told me to use a variety of lights for my tank. I bought a Life-Glo 2 (6700 K) for the 48" ballast, but he told me for the four other 15" bulbs, that I should get 2 actinic bulbs and either Power- or Aqua-Glos. He said that this would give a fuller spectrum and this would be good for our plants. I don't know if anyone is familiar with the Hagen bulbs, but that is mostly what we can get around here. I am wondering whether this full spectrum idea is a good one or whether I should try and stay around that 6700 K mark?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[jimbooo]

okay firstly actinic bulbs do absolutly nothing for plants but are really good at growing algae of all kinds.

those bulbs are used to simulate moonlight and grow coral so unless you want to look at your fish at 2am without waking them or have a marine tank dont bother you'll have big algae problems.


what you need is a variety of full spectrum tubes from 3000K to 7500K

i have 4 tubes on my 40 Gallon.

one Dennerle "Special Plant" - 3000K
one JBL Solar tropic - 4000K
one JBL Solar Natur - 6000K
one Arcadia Fresh water - 7500K

all are 30W so 120W in total, all tubes are full spectrum (apart from the 7500K).

this is the kind of look you will get (all tubes are switched on)

with just 7500K tubes you'll get rapid lush growth with pruning every few days and a bit of an algae problem (unless your lucky)

after i rejigged my tubes to the above set up i have noticed the growth slow a bit but with more quality.

sounds weird but for example rather than my plants growing big bold and fast they seem to be a little more intricate with the cabomba bushing out nicely rather than racing to the surface and looking scraggly. also my pearling is now constant with fine bubbles rising all the time to the surface.

it's hard to describe other than that but in my opinion that is the best setup in terms of lighting.

if you do that though you'll also need CO2 (generally when you have more than 2 watts per gallon)

 

[dartos]

Thanks jimbooo and very nice tank btw.

With your response, I am now very confused. Guppygirl said that "3400K is pretty low for plants" but you say that I need a varitey of full spectrum from 3000K to 7500K. I currently have old bulbs that are 3400K and I am wondering if I could keep 2 15W bulbs of these and buy 2 new bulbs somewhere in the range between 3000K and 7500K?

I will definitely stay away from the actinic, but my LFS told me that putting some 10000K bulbs in would also help. Do you think this is a good idea or should I stay strictly to the 3000K-7500K range?

I am sorry for all of the questions, I am just getting a lot of different answers of what to do. I trust the advice I recieve here more because the guy at the LFS told me that "I know the fish like the back of my hand, but the plants I am not too sure about." So, thank you all for the great advice.

 

[kenneth_kpe]

i would suggest staying with the 3000-7500K range, some might even say a bit lower at around 6500K only a good way to tell if a bulb will do you good is if you look at the color spectrum of the bulb... if it peaks in the areas used by plants then it would benefit your plants another good way to look at the "plant(ability)" of a bulb is to find out its CRI higher CRI is in some ways better since CRI is the quality of the light compared to sunlight

lateral line is really good with these things and he has already posted a lot of info on how to choose your bulbs properly around the forums just search around

hope this helps

*btw i dont think the 10000k would be of much use to plants... i think its more for marine tanks ?

 

[guppygirl]

Forget your LFS!!! 10,000 K encourage algae too. Yech!
It is possible to grow plants pretty well with 3000K, but I think 5000 to 6700K is the best.