Watts up?

Swimfins

Swimfins

This is as good as it gets.
Sep 24, 2004
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Montreal Quebec Canada
community.webshots.com
I've been perusing planted tanks on the net and see that some people achieve amazing results without hitting the 4 watt per gallon mile post.

Can a tank be overlit?

I find some really highly lit tanks to be garish. I prefer a more somber kind of wilderness look. This is the look I'm after, I guess it amounts to personal taste and what your after. Knowing what you want is a help. I keep ooooing and awwing one tank after another.... :o

How do you guys plan your planted tanks?
 
Swimfins said:
Can a tank be overlit?

I find some really highly lit tanks to be garish. I prefer a more somber kind of wilderness look. This is the look I'm after, I guess it amounts to personal taste and what your after. Knowing what you want is a help. I keep ooooing and awwing one tank after another.... :o

How do you guys plan your planted tanks?
Click to expand...

I personally consider 5WPG to be a practical limit. You can grow plants in higher light than that, but why would ya want to? :) The fertilizer consumption can get pricey, and most high-light plants grow so fast that you're doing routine gardening a lot more than you might expect. 3WPG is about as high as I want to go anymore.

I tend to draw my tanks out from an above view, and make educated guesses about what will (and won't) grow depending on the WPG rating.
 
Heya SF :D
I think it's possible to overlight for some species that prefer lower-light conditions - in my tank (which is still sort of 'under construction') I tried to place Crypts and other plants that don't need high light in more shaded areas of the tank (doesn't show in plan view, but the Rotala slightly shades the areas where some of the the Crypt. undulata are, and the sword shades part of the other side). I've got 4.6WPG now, but my tank is 24" deep; I feel more light is needed to be sure that enough reaches the bottom.
I don't think I'm through planning the layout, but what I did was look at books and pictures online to get a sense of what looked nice to me. I tried to place plants that grow very tall (and fast) towards the back, some slower-growing stem plants in the middle and there are medium sized crypts forming a 'v' shape from the mid-sides to around the middle front. I tried to place contrasting leaf shapes and colours together, to make it visually interesting. In the front corners are dwarf crypts and pygmy swords (which are multiplying like crazy!). There is one large piece of driftwood, and one amazon sword off-centre but near the middle of the tank. When it fills in, hopefully things will be in a roughly 'U' shape, leaving lots of swimming room in the front.
I've attached a little picture :D

planted tank plan.JPG
 
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Blinky said:
Heya SF :D
I think it's possible to overlight for some species that prefer lower-light conditions - in my tank (which is still sort of 'under construction') I tried to place Crypts and other plants that don't need high light in more shaded areas of the tank (doesn't show in plan view, but the Rotala slightly shades the areas where some of the the Crypt. undulata are, and the sword shades part of the other side). I've got 4.6WPG now, but my tank is 24" deep; I feel more light is needed to be sure that enough reaches the bottom.
I don't think I'm through planning the layout, but what I did was look at books and pictures online to get a sense of what looked nice to me. I tried to place plants that grow very tall (and fast) towards the back, some slower-growing stem plants in the middle and there are medium sized crypts forming a 'v' shape from the mid-sides to around the middle front. I tried to place contrasting leaf shapes and colours together, to make it visually interesting. In the front corners are dwarf crypts and pygmy swords (which are multiplying like crazy!). There is one large piece of driftwood, and one amazon sword off-centre but near the middle of the tank. When it fills in, hopefully things will be in a roughly 'U' shape, leaving lots of swimming room in the front.
I've attached a little picture :D
Click to expand...
Ms. Blinky; What did you do that layout in? Meaning, what program?
 
personally I dont like using the WPG rule of thumb.

Once you decide on the types of plants you want to use
determine if u want to use CO2/ferts
and pick between NO, PC and MH based on ur tank height

I've never seen an over lit tank.
When ur looking at pics you have to remember that the pic isn't always a 100% reproduction of how the tank looks.

As far as lighting/color/texture/etc I'd say pics of my tank are about 30% accurate on how it really looks.
 
Harlock, I used Paint - I sat here at the computer, looked at my tank, and it took all of five minutes to make a sketch to post in this thread. I love paint for little stuff :)
For actually planning out the tank, I find sometimes it's easier to use a pen and paper - call me old school ;).
 
It all depends on what kind of plants you want to have. I have a 25 gallon tall Eclipse tank with two 15 watt tubes over it. That is not a lot of light, particularly with such a deep tank. I have one daylight tube and one bluer plant spectrum tube. But then again, I have crypts, hornwort, swords, a banana plant, and moneywort. The tank is lush and the fish are happy. If I had more light available, I would choose different plants. The pic below is from a couple months ago. The plants are a lot more dense now. I don't have a current pic.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v457/Obsidiantears74/fish3.jpg
 
Very cool pic Obsidisan, I'm after a jungle mix lie yours. I suppose it will be trial and error. I lucked out with my lil 25 gallon. I planted red plants, 2 weeks ago, expecting them to do poorly under 40 watt of light. They are actually doing great.....much to my amazement. It was an experiment and it worked out ok. Now I'm planning my big tank and want to do things right from the start. With my small tank, I screwed up in the plant department, not realizing 20 watt was not enough for much. Nice to talk to those who know. :)
 
Here's a pic of my 25 extra high tank. It's a tall tank with 40 watts too. I quite honestly don't know if it is possible to overlight tanks. I've seen ones with huge metal halide watts and look great. I'm guessing if you're willing to put into the money for CO2 and time for ferts constantly almost any light can be done.

Low light, no liquid ferts, just pretty heavy feeding
 
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