More Thoughts On My Lighting....

[Monte20]

I just figured something. my planted tank is one of my 55 gallons. 48l 18w 24t.
threw a simple math formula, i figured with 110 w i will need to run the lights for 15 hours a day for the plants to do well. 15 is too long. i need more light. and i cant afford the nifty lighting assemblies (why i made my own). i need about 40w more. no more room on the top of the tank. will shining a light or two from the sides help? i do not want to give up on these plants. i have low to medium light plants. wife wants me to just go back to how it was before. grrrrrr.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Plants grow towards the light- if you light from the sides, some of your plants will lean that way.

 

[Themuleous]

Depends on what type of light you shine from the side, I doubt a desk lamp will do much good

 

[Monte20]

Well thats settled. A friend said he would take the plants off my hands, this way the plants still survive. And I seceded to the wife and agreed to arrange the tank as it was before. only this time, im using a black substrate. mostly sand with a little bit of gravel. Thanks for the help though. I just dont want to kill plants because im too proud.

 

[CBBP]

Ok.. here is what I did when it came to this problem myself.

I removed the light that was in there... then placed reflective tape all around the insides of the light cover.. Then placed a doubled light socket ended lamp head in there... I then took 2 mini compact lights (if you do this buy ones labeled "Day light" as that is 6500k.. anything else is the wrong spectrum..) then did this on each cover.


depended on wattage you can get massive ammounts of WPG. mine was going to end up beign 4.3 WPG! I quickly changed to 40's and got 2.9 WPG.