Lighting question for planted tank.

[Jade4Mango]

I got a 50cm cube tank and I currently got 3 6500k tubes on it. But Im thinking of upgrading to PCs. Just wondering what do people recommend? Also how many rows would be best?

Regards

 

[daza]

In terms of price; Interpet T5's are the cheapest I have found. I bought some recently but haven't used any others to compare to. Surrey Pet Supplies were the cheapest I found online. But I just noticed you are in Aus anyway!

Sometimes the light goes off with just a slight knock to the connector, but other than that they seem okay.

I got the Daylight Plus lamps with them after reading a couple of recommendations over the TriPlus lamps.

I wrote to Interpet asking what the Kelvin rating was for these lamps and they said that their manufacturers were unable to tell them!! (don't ask what spec they design or test them to then!).

The Daylight Plus box shows a spectrum with a peak at approx 530 nanometres, which gives approx 5472 Kelvin (using Wein's law).

hope that helps.

 

[George Farmer]

A 50cm cube is around 30 US Gallons so I would go for at least 75 Watts total - that gives you 2.5 WPG.

I assume you use CO2 so 2.5 WPG is ideal and you should be able to grow most plants.

As for quantity of tubes; I'm afraid I'm not experienced with PCs - especially the available types in Australia. If they're the same as the UK Interpets as mentioned by daza then a 24w tube = 12 inches. 36w = 16inches. 55w = 21 inches. You can work out from these how many tubes you'll need/fit in your tank.