Light Tube Selection

[JoshuaA]

Hey,

Currently running a Rio 125 with CO2 whilst dosing Flourish, Flourish Excel and Tropica Substrate with black gravel on top of that. I unfortunately only have 2 x 18w T8 Arcadia Original bulbs, after long hours of searching I finally found a stockist for an upgrade.

I just purchased a Juwel light bar and as it doesn't come with bulbs and I've always preferred running Arcadia Originals I am wondering what tubes to pick.

I expect the bar to arrive on Monday as it was ordered and dispatched on next day delivery today however being a Saturday and it obviously won't arrive on Sunday so.

Anyway being 590mm T5 tubes I believe this can be quite restrictive, though I am aware of Arcadia who produce JT5 Plant Pros... however they're not as readily available in my LFS compared to the Juwel branded bulbs.

So I am ideally looking for advice on what to plop into this tank for tubes... I decided to go for the CO2 first before the Light as I can at least utilise the CO2 partially up to this point where as the stronger upgraded light without CO2 could of been disastrous or at least completely fruitless.

So what tubes do you think I should get for this bar?

Thanks in advance!

- Josh

Edit: I'm also looking to change ferts as I do like the Seachem brand but I think I'm picking them due to "Brand loyalty" rather than quality. Can someone suggest any ferts? Dry ferts also as I have a hell of a lot of deionised water due to a failed attempt to make a DC solution.

 

[RadaR]

2x18W is plenty.
Should have concentrated on boosting your Carbon and nutrient dosing instead of making things more difficult by adding more light.

I've got the same tank as you. Kitted out with:

Just 2x18W with reflecters
Pressurized CO2. Diffused by Aquamedic reactor
Colombo Florabase
Dosing EI

I can grow anything I want with that. Lack of light isnt an issue.

I decided to go for the CO2 first before the Light

Phew, thank goodness for that

As far as tube choices go, the plants really dont mind. It's all down to your personal preference. Kelvin makes no difference to plants, neither does LUX or CRI.
A different blend of kelvin would look nice. For example a 6500K bulb and a 10,000K bulb. Or a 6500K bulb with a 3000K bulb. As I said, it's up to you.

 

[UKCo2Guy]

Hi,

I get all my tubes from Lamp Specs

Don`t be pushed by your LFS for expensive plant growing flux capacitor based light beams, i have really good plant growth with £5 T5`s on all my tanks. As said above it`s all about your preference to brightness and colour, the most important aspect to tubes are their PAR level. If it helps here is a link with some good, fair test videos on what different tubes will look like together: Light Videos

Hope that helps a bit, i`m no expert but i have saved a few quid since moving away from the `branded` stuff and have had better plant growth since.

Cheers,

2x18W is plenty.
Should have concentrated on boosting your Carbon and nutrient dosing instead of making things more difficult by adding more light.

I've got the same tank as you. Kitted out with:

Just 2x18W with reflecters
Pressurized CO2. Diffused by Aquamedic reactor
Colombo Florabase
Dosing EI

I can grow anything I want with that. Lack of light isnt an issue.

I decided to go for the CO2 first before the Light

Phew, thank goodness for that

As far as tube choices go, the plants really dont mind. It's all down to your personal preference. Kelvin makes no difference to plants, neither does LUX or CRI.
A different blend of kelvin would look nice. For example a 6500K bulb and a 10,000K bulb. Or a 6500K bulb with a 3000K bulb. As I said, it's up to you.

 

[JoshuaA]

I thought 2 x 18w would of been enough myself but comparing the depth of colour and intensity of light on my 40l tank with a arcadia arc pod is disappointing. Looking at it, it just doesn't feel anywhere near enough light penetrates to the bottom. My dwarf hairgrass is somewhat showing it though my other tank the hairgrass is full of life. The small tank only has 6 pygmy corys in though, so it's more about the look of plants.

Thanks for the response, thought there was more to it when it came to bulb selection though you learn something new everyday eh!

 

[RadaR]

I thought 2 x 18w would of been enough myself but comparing the depth of colour and intensity of light on my 40l tank with a arcadia arc pod is disappointing. Looking at it, it just doesn't feel anywhere near enough light penetrates to the bottom.

That's because your observations are based on what YOU perceive to be bright. What us humans see is completely different. We are seeing, kelvin, LUX, CRI etc. However, all the plants really care about is PAR. Something we really dont have a visual perspective of. A tank may look dim to us however it could have good levels of photosynthetic active radiation. On the other hand, it could be the other way around. The tank could appear quite bright to us, but it's PAR may be low.
Trust me, 2x18W is enough.

Early stages

 

[JoshuaA]

Unfortunately I already bought it out of disappointment so I will give it a go however I guess I can always sell one of the lightbars for cheap on the sell adds if it doesn't work out, both my tanks use the Arcadia original light tubes and have the same substrate just different depths of water obviously. I know it's all what we perceive but aesthetically I'm not pleased with it currently as what I perceive is that the substrate on my 40L is quite bright and attractive where as the on the 125 the bottom is more dull and the dwarf grass isn't nearly as attractive or lively.

Though I do like your tank quite a lot what substrate is that? I was looking at getting that ADA Amazonia though my LFS convinced me a single large bag wouldn't be enough so I took another option.

I've read that you can replace the wooden trim/lid for these tanks, how easy is it to remove it initially anyway if you happen to know?

Edit:

Also, when people refer to the WPG. We are talking UK or US gallons? UK would make it sound like a lot more light per gallon.

Don`t be pushed by your LFS for expensive plant growing flux capacitor based light beams

 

[ian]

I've read that you can replace the wooden trim/lid for these tanks, how easy is it to remove it initially anyway if you happen to know?

Yes you can, sorry when i advised you about the Arcadia light previously, i thought you had removed yours for some reason Josh. Apparently it's do-able, but you have to be careful obviously, i have read people doing it with a pallet knife.

As for the WPG rule, we use the US gallons as a rule.

 

[JoshuaA]

I've read that you can replace the wooden trim/lid for these tanks, how easy is it to remove it initially anyway if you happen to know?

Yes you can, sorry when i advised you about the Arcadia light previously, i thought you had removed yours for some reason Josh. Apparently it's do-able, but you have to be careful obviously, i have read people doing it with a pallet knife.

As for the WPG rule, we use the US gallons as a rule.

No problem, it added some depth to my quest to find a solution though I do feel I might of jumped too fast to a new light bar when I found out the casing can be removed.

So we will be looking at around 1.75WPG on my tank with the 2 x 28w T5 Tubes? Though I'm under the impression from other topics the WPG guideline isn't very useful when it comes to T5. Is this due to increased efficiency?

Finally... might be a little silly to ask though but out of interest, When we have 2 x 28w in our tubes in a perfect world we will get 56J of light energy. Realistically how much do we actually get?

 

[ian]

There's a few school of thoughts when it comes to the T5 thing, you'll see people saying it's not a good marker, however with a normal T5 you can still work by this marker. True thing is t5's also come in a high output version, which no one has really tested as per wpg marker. I had a chat with Andy the other week about it. With the t5ho you cannot really use the wpg rule. So, if it's a normal t5 you can still use the wattage as a general rule. As the T5 bit is only a measurment of the tube itself.

As for the other question, it's hard to evaluate really unless you measure it I suppose, you have to take into account the loss of light, whether you have reflectors ect ect.

 

[RadaR]

Though I do like your tank quite a lot what substrate is that? I was looking at getting that ADA Amazonia though my LFS convinced me a single large bag wouldn't be enough so I took another option.
I've read that you can replace the wooden trim/lid for these tanks, how easy is it to remove it initially anyway if you happen to know?

It's a 9litre bag of Colombo Florabase Black. It's fantastic stuff. So easy to plant in.

I've never heard of anyone removing the wooden trim from the Juwel tanks. I've heard of people replacing the black, plastic support brace with clear acrylic though, but that's it.

 

[ian]

I must say, I have a juwel tank, and personally I wouldn't remove the trim on it. I have thought about it, but it seems like hard work and you could end up doing damage. Like insay I have seen it done on other tanks.


Edit, I'm also using flora base in my 20ltr and have also been very impressed by it. I have done daily water changes though as it's also renound for leaching ammonia.

 

[JoshuaA]

Does anyone else have any experience using the Tropica substrate? I assumed because of the quality of the potted plants they would know their stuff. I don't imagine many of my aged plants have rooted deep enough to the substrate yet to benefit from it so I can't really comment on it myself.

Is that "Black plastic support" really a support strut or is it purely a place to prevent the light bar slipping in my accident? I only use it for a place to pour fresh water on during a water change, makes things easy.

I think I made a little mistake in my 40L tank though. I have had a bad history of Vallis melting in my tanks and I decided to go with it anyway whilst carpeting the tank with Dwarf hairgrass. The Vallis has rooted under every clump of dwarf grass and has taken over half the tank already just on the substrate in 3 weeks, completely amazed it looks so healthy too which is very odd as I have notoriously soft water. Now the problem exists of removing a lot of it with out disturbing the tropica clay substrate. I only did a thin layer gravel and I imagine this is a huge boost to it's growth as it could root down to the clay within a matter of days.

Thanks for the help so far.

Edit:

Oh yeh I forgot, I was a bit of an idiot by the looks of it when I bought the jewel reflectors for my T8 tubes. I swear I kept the T5 clips behind just in case I "upgraded" however I can't find them any more! Any idea what the next best idea would for sticking my reflectors on these tubes? Possibly trying to modify the clip for the T8s?

 

[JoshuaA]

So I got my lightbar today and went and bought some bulbs to go with it, I decided on 2 x JT5 Plant Pros from Arcadia. I've always liked Arcadia products, especially my 11w pod light.

All I can say is... AHHH MY BEAUTIFUL EYES!! Those bulbs are so strong, I imagined it as just having an extra bulb in their at the level I'm use to but this was something else... also on the packaging of the Arcadia bulb it states "Extra High Output" under the impression that a 28w is the same as a 28w apart from he compounds coating the bulb inside is this one of these "High output" lamps you were talking about Ianho?

I was amazed, I have had my tank on Co2 for about a month now and have been waiting for the day that the plants are able to utilise the light, I started off with only 6 hours of light today compared to the 7 normal and dosed Excel and Flourish which is out of my normal sync. First time I've seen my plants pearl My swords were pearling within a couple of hours along with some Java fern I had just put in from my smaller tank.

My CO2 has been at 20-30ppm from about a month now since it being installed, I put it on 2 hours before lights come on and goes off 2 hours before the light using a timer plug on the solenoid valve.

Very impressed... although I want to make sure I'm not going to go overboard or under with the nutrients.

I was looking at TPN+ in my LFS and at £17 for 500ml I was dubious about buying it. I need another bottle of Excel in the next few weeks and was wondering whether to stop this on the main tank or keep it going? I use Flourish (Micro Nutrient one) only twice a week at the recommended dosage. I've read around here and other forums and the idea seems to be knocking this up a notch to daily doses as Lots of lights and lots of light are going to increase the consumption from normal rate drastically.

Also I was reading someones journal before and someone stated their tank was consuming 5-8ml of TPN+ a day, how do you know how much it is actually consuming? How do you know what is the barrier between over saturated and under treated?