Is this lighting ok for freshwater plants

G

grean

AC Members
Aug 7, 2008
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Hello all,

I have a 150 gallon freshwater community tank with small schooling fish and I would like to add a variety of plants to it.

I am using Icecap ballists and they are wired to hold a total of four 48" T12 bulbs.

Would the following bulbs be good for my setup?

AQUASUN

AQUARIUM LIGHTING
​

* 180° Internal Reflector, T12

* 100% Tri-Band White Spectrum

* 10,000°K Color Temperature

[FONT=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]* Useful Life 4500 hrs.
[/FONT]


They are 110W each which would give me a total of 440W of lighting.

Also, has anyone ever done business with this site www.poseidonwarehouse.com, and was the experience good or bad.

Thanks for any help/info you can provide me. :thm:
 
110 watts? If the light bulb is a 48" long T12, then each should be only 40 watts, unless they do something to it to make the light more powerful. Everything else looks good though.
 
They can handle 310W per ballist. I used the same ballasts in a saltwater setup with 2 110W VHO lights per ballast for years in them.

I just don't know that much about freshwater plants and I want to make sure those light bulbs will be a good choice for me since I have to go with 48" or 46.5" T12 lights.
 
grean said:
They are VHO lights. Here is a link to where I found them. http://www.poseidonwarehouse.com/LIGHTING/VHO_Lighting/UV_VHO_Lighting.html

They are the Aquasun Professional Series, the 3rd set of light down.

Thanks for the quick response.
Click to expand...

Hmm. I have T8 bulbs now. Two of them at 36" long each for my 125 gallon. So that's only 60 watts. With those bulbs I'd be at 190 watts which should be enough for low light plants but these bulbs are T12. Anyone have a solution for comments for me?
 
Well first what IC do you have the 430 or 660 and just to let you know in case you didnt you can run any flouresent tubes on them. You can run 40 watt T12 tubes and it will drive them to about 95 watts or T8's and it will drive them to about 80 watts. The IC 430 will only run 12 foot of total bulb length and the 660 will run 16 foot of total bulb length.
 
I thought 10k was ok for planted tanks? I thought I read anywhere from around 6.7K to 10K would work well for a planted tank, but again I'm just trying to go off memory on what I read as I know very little about freshwater plants.

Also is 440W going to be too much since the tank is larger (it's 60" long x 24" tall x 24" deep). I already have 4 40W aquasun lights, so would it be better for me to just purchase 2 110W lights and put on 2 of the 40W ones that I already have which would make it a total of 300W.

Sorry for all of the questions I just don't want to waste money if my set up is not going to work for plants.
 
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