Lighting For New Tank

[mrearl2u]

I'm in the process of gathering the necessities to get a new tank started and would like to have live plants as well. This is for my 5 yr old granddaughter and we are starting with a 10 gallon aquarium, aquatech 515 filter, and a regent hood that I already had. The hood has screw in type (e38 base) incandescent bulbs, but I'm wondering if it would be better to get some fluorescent bulbs for the live plants. Here are a few I saw and was thinking might would work well, both are 10 watt "mini compact fluorescent" made by Coralife. One is a straight white light, mod. # 05508. The other is half white and half blue that they call a 50/50, mod. # 05509. Would the blue spectrum be more beneficial to plant life or are they designed more for coral reefs? Will I need to set the lights up on a timer? Also I plan to get my water tested sometime in the next few days. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Byron]

Save your money.  With an incandescent (screw-in bulb) hood, which I am assuming will take basic screw-in bulbs, you can use the Daylight 6500K CFL (compact fluorescent, the twirl type) bulbs.  I have two 10w GE Daylight CFL bulbs over my 10g and the plants are thriving.  Look for CFL's with a 6500K rating, and in 10w.
 
Byron.