Wattage Question for 55 Gal

[ShmooBeast]

What would be the recommened wattage for a 55 gal aquarium that is going to be heavily planted? Just want to make sure that the various plants I am planning on getting are going to be able to thrive. My 55 gal has two 24" hoods each with a single bulb.

[Kissofthegorami]

It depends on if you are going to use co2. If you don't use co2, its useless to use very high light because it will grow too much algae. For low light plants you need at least 1 watt per a gallon. If you use 2-2.5 watts per gallon you don't really need c02 and you can grow most plants. So you are looking at lighting that will give you somewhere around 110-130 watts. Multiple fluorescent lights (three 40 watt tubes), or better yet you can get one compact flourescent fixture with that kind of wattage.

[Harlock]

What wattage depends on what plants you want to fet. At 4 watts per gallon, you could grow anything. At 3 watts per gallon you would be able to grow anything from the medium high to less range. What plants were you looking to get? Also, what wattage of light you can run depends on the end caps and ballasts under your hood. Two 24" normal output lights are likely to be only 20 watt bulbs and a total of 40 watts over a 55 gallon is low light. Very low light. Your options of plants are a lot more limited that way, but there is still some variety and I have seen some wonderful low-light, low tech tanks.

[Rebgen]

I just retro-fitted lights from the exact same set-up. I recently bought a 55 gal. with two 24" hoods and single 17w bulbs in each. My objective was a low/med planted tank without the need for CO2 injection. I bought a retrofit kit from http://www.ahsupply.com/ and ended up with 2 WPG. You'll need two 55w compact fluro kits if you decide to use your existing hoods, which is what I did.

It's fairly easy to do the upgrade. Then afterwards you can sit back and learn more about the ancient art of algae control which is what I'm doing right now. :eek:

Good luck!

[happychem]

What plants do you want and how much money do you want to spend?

With a low light-low tech setup, you can get away with more, but can grow less. It's a simpler setup, less work per week and lower cost, but depending on how little light you go with, you're going to be limited in what you can do. But as Harlock points out, there are some beautiful low light tanks. Ironically, you may find yourself spending as much or more on plants, I've found "low light" plants tend to be more expensive, probably because they grow so much slower.

And there's a whole range of higher light stuff. But you will get into CO2, DIY is starting to get really tedious for a 55g setup, but could be done. You'll need a good substrate like Fluorite, there are others and there are cost saving methods even there. Anyway, AHSupply is an excellent place to go for retrofits and power compacts in general.

[buddha_red]

but PLEASE think of your fish. if you have dar loving fish, really high light will stress them.

im using 2wpg now and thinking about adding two 6700's to it also.