10,000°K?

[shadow1345]

plz name the plants that require 10,000°K or more.(just curious)

[rich311k]

The K rating is the color of the bulb. Plants will grow with anything from 4500 to 14000. The color is more for what the owner of the aquarium prefers. If you google it you can find volumes written on which bulb, color etc. is the best. I think for most of us it is not that important.

It is the intensity of the light, watts per gallon that can help you determine which plants will grow well in your environment.

[kimmisc]

I think the 10,000K bulbs are usually used for SW tanks. They give off such a white color of light that it has a blue tinge to it. I'm using 6700K in my planted tank and it looks pretty good imo.... very white. It depends what you find appealing.

First you need to decide what kind of setup you want... low, medium, or high light. As said above, the light intensity is measured in watts. The higher the lighting (watts per gallon), the more ferts and CO2 you'll need. You can go with low light and get by without CO2 and ferts if you choose undemanding plants, but your choices will be much more limited. I would start by looking at various plants and deciding what type of plants you want most, and go from there.

[fgump]

10,000K bulbs... They give off such a white color of light that it has a blue tinge to it. I'm using 6700K in my planted tank and it looks pretty good imo...

I have a 6700K bulb on my 28 gallon. And I'm in the process of setting up a 10 gallon. The closest thing I could find to 6700k for the 10 gallon was a 10000K/6700K combo light. The addition of the 10000K definitely adds a blue tint.

The 10 gallon doesn't have any plants yet, so I don't know if I'll like the effect of the 10000K. But I do like the looks of the 6700K that's on my 30 gallon.

[phanmc]

People need to stop worrying about the kelvin rating of bulbs.

4000k, 10000k, and 18000k will grow plants fine.

[loaches r cool]

Hmmm, require 10,000K? I dont think that there is any plants that couldnt live with lower K than that. Maybe there are some plants that prefer a little higher K, like kelp maybe? I'd guess any plants from deeper marine waters would tend to receive a lot less reds in their spectrum.

Edit> Dont forget that the rating of some bulbs doesnt really produce the advertised spectrum. For example some 10,000K bulbs are very red. These do tend to grow plants very well but arent really 10,000K.

[travis simonson]

A bulb's Kelvin rating is merely an approximation of the light color it is supposed to reproduce. The typical Kelvin range for bulbs used for growing plants is 5000-10000K, but even that is just a rough approximation. Put it this way, if you get a bulb within this range you can't go wrong.

A typical "daylight" bulb will put out visible light that peaks in the red, green, and blue spectra. Chlorophyll requires light in all three of these spectra for optimum energy absorption. A bulb's Kelvin rating is an estimate of it's color output based on the specific frequency peaks in these three spectra and their intensity. This is why bulbs with the same K rating may appear quite different to us. One 6700K bulb may appear greenish while another will appear pinkish, even though both have the same Kelvin rating and have peaks in the same color frequencies. The difference often lies in the intensity of the of color peaks. The first (greenish) bulb may have a more intense green spectrum peak, while the second (pinkish) bulb likely has a higher red spectrum peak.

This explains why actinic lighting (used in many saltwater reef setups) does not do well for plants. Actinic bulbs are designed mainly for high blue spectrum lighting (to reproduce the naturally blue light found in most reef environments) and do not have significant red and green spectrum output, thus performing poorly for growing plants.

That said, just remember that Kelvin ratings are merely subjective approximations of a bulb's color output and that your plants really don't care what the light looks like to you as long as they are getting sufficiently bright light in all three color wavelengths (red, green, blue). Bulbs in the 5000-10000K Kelvin range will typically provide such light but can vary greatly in our perception of their color output.