hahahaha
try these guys:
Lighting the Planted Tank | Rex's Guide to Planted Tanks
Minimum Light Threshold | Watts Per Gallon | Rex's Guide to Planted Tanks
Color temperature
Color temperature refers to the Kelvin rating of the bulb, light has different color temperatures as shown in the chart below.
Correct me if I am mistaken but I think the Kelvin refers to the temperature needed to heat a bar of lead to produce the same color.
As seen on the chart, the lower the temperature the closer to red the color of light is, higher means closer to blue. To make it simple plants generally photosynthesize light with colors between 5,000 and 10,000 kelvin, if you look at the chart these are the “whites”. Mixing and matching different Kelvin bulbs produce better results.
In planted tanks and generally in the lighting industry we have “colors of white”. This may sound weird at first but this simply refers to the different “whites” that are available for different applications.
In example you might run in the following types of bulbs in ACE hardware, Cool White and Daylight.
Coolwhite is 4,000 ++ Kelvin.
Daylight is 6,000 ++ Kelvin.
If you look at the cool white bulb it would generally appear normal or white, but beside a daylight bulb it would appear yellowish. The same thing will happen if you put a daylight bulb beside a skywhite bulb which is 8,000 kelvin.
Remember the pinkish aquarium bulbs that we talked about earlier, these are specialist bulbs, even higher in the Kelvin scale, too high in fact for plants, if used on their own.
In simple terms just use daylight for planted tanks and you will be safe. (6,500 kelvin), Why daylight bulbs?
These are the reasons why.
1) Readily available everywhere
2) Relatively cheap vs specialist bulbs.
Lighting a planted tank, I know first thing that would actually come into your mind is costs and effectivity of the lights that you use on the plants that you are planning to put on your planted aquarium.
One thing I like about planted tank is that you could customize, you have options on what type of lighting, the intensity/watts or lumens, and you could be creative in setting up your lighting setups or even your hood.
Our goal here is to simulate the sun. So basically we will be using daylight bulbs or fluorescent. And since our resources here in the Philippines especially here in Cebu is quite limited, we usually improvise. Those who has the upper hand would setup high tech lighting setup and for those who has limited resources will usually resort in DIYs (Do-It-Yourself). In my own opinion, it doesn't matter for me if you have the be$t lighting $etup or just the regular daylights, as long as you get the plants needs to show its potential then you are doing great already.
Diri sa Cebu, usually atong makit-an ug common nowadays are the CFLs and more on T5s na. Although we have metal halides, but those are still very expensive and I think they have low kelvin ratings, most of them don't display that specs on their boxes gani. PLs are good, I was able to find some, well, China made.
Right now, experienced aquarist nowadays are looking into the LED technology. LEDs are low in heat and low in energy consumption. Pero ang LED (superbright) available karon diri sa Cebu is not that bright jud so, you need a lot of it with a price to pay. Sa pagka karon, LEDs are used as night lights and also in moonlight for saltwater setup.
So, be creative, I would really suggest to plan ahead, research on the plants that you are going to use and by that data, you could think about what type of lighting and intensity that you want to use on your planted setup.
Goodluck and Godbless.
Originally Posted by ghundo44
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