T5

[elmo666]

Not too familiar with these tubes, came back to the hobby after a long break due to illness. Currently have a 100 gallon set-up that has 22" water depth. "When I was a lad" the tube of choice for plants was flora-glow or sunglo. I bought a 4 tube t5 light off ebay recently, looks very bright. Tubes are 3 x 39w sun-lux and a 39w lifeglo. The sun-lux have a 10000k rating, not sure of the other. What tubes would be best suited to a moderately planted tank? Any advice greatly appreciated. Just for info, the tank is quite heavily filtered. I have a built in rear up and over trickle filter (15" long, 5" wide, 18" high) with a 1700 lph pump returning to the tank at low level. I also run a large external, 1500lph, with the return pumping back into the top of the trickle filter through 3" of fine filter wool.

 

[DrRob]

Current wisdom seems to be that the plants aren't all that picky, so long as it's at or below the 10k mark. I've certainly not noticed any difference with plant tubes, except that possibly the plants grew better with ordinary 10k tubes that didn't claim to be designed for anything much.

Overall it seems to depend on the amount of light they actually throw out and what colour you prefer the look of.

 

[elmo666]

Thanks, will bare that in mind when replacing them. Difficult to tell when they do need replacing I guess, so gonna relace the one by one anyway.

 

[RossC]

I asked this question a while ago too and as mentioned above aslong as its <10000K then you should be fine. The best looking bulbs in my opinion are
the daylight white ones as they give a natural look. So long as the strength is decent 2Watts pre gallon or more you should be fine. I've currently got a daylight white 20W in my 20 gallon so I'm a bit under powered but the plants seem to be doing fine, it just means slower growth. See sig for photos
Hope this helps

 

[elmo666]

Thanks for your help, much appreciated.