Lighting Question

[laurasmithuk]

i own a juwel rekord 86. the lighting that came with tank was rubbish so i changed to a different bulb and added another light.

i have 2 lights running at 15watts..... does this mean the lighting is enough for plants to grow ok? i have a nutrafin c02 system running too.

 

[AndyTaylor]

That gives you 1.3WPG.... Not a lot of light and probably not enough to need CO2 but it will help.
You should be easily able to grow low light plants such as anubis, jave fern, amazon swords etc.....you could have a beautiful tank with just those plants, IMO.
You can safely increase your lighting to 2WPG if you needed to....

Andy

 

[RYO]

Should be ok for low light plants. Lol Andy beat me to it.

 

[AndyTaylor]

did i miscalculate? My converter must be out!

 

[RYO]

lol call it 1.5 for ease

 

[AndyTaylor]

Done!

 

[oldwhitewood]

For this size tank you typically would need 4 tubes to grow trickier plants like glosso. As a general rule of thumb a 24x15x12 would need 4 tubes and a 36x18x18 6 tubes. It gets really confusing now with so many tubes and options T5 etc

 

[laurasmithuk]

thanks for everyones help. i seem to be growing certain plants ok.

i just seem to have a problem with algae, its bright green and i can get it off the glass.... its very stubborn

 

[RYO]

I use the green scourers the wife ( ) uses for washing up. The green spot algae comes off real easy with it.

 

[laurasmithuk]

what actually causes the green spot then?

its a reacurring problem and a bloody pain in the bum!!

 

[tonyhipps]

Hi laurasmithuk,
I've been doing the "siesta" or "thunder storm period" for about a year now and haven't had an algae problem since then. The lights come on for 5 hours then turn off for two and then come back on for another five. From what I understand this break in the light doesn't give the algae enough continuous light to survive.

 

[Valmyre]

hi laurasmith, you say you have 15 watt bulbs, you could try the Power-Glo bulbs @ 20 watts, not much more but it would improve the lighting slightly