Not all lighting is the same...the actual amount of light produced by incandescent, CFLs, T5NO, T5HO, T12s, MH, LEDs, etc. will vary greatly. 70 watts just means it takes 70 watts to illuminate that bulb...
29 Gallon Journal
- Thread starter allaboutfish
- Start date
Not "high" light, not "low" light...but it's all relative. Plants will certainly benefit from CO2, ferts but I would hesitate to say that you would absolutely NEED them.
T12's are actually obsolete and are not made anymore. T8's are following quickly behind but aren't quite there yet. T5's you can only find plant spectrum bulbs in High Output (HO) and you need to make sure any fixture you put them in has an HO ballast, because it's different than Normal Output (NO). I found this out the hard way. I eventually gave up and went with spiral compacts instead.
AFAIK T12s haven't been phased out completely just yet as ceasing production wouldn't necessarily mean that there aren't any still in circulation since the mandate was only put into effect a little over a year ago...although I could be wrong...in any case the bulb itself should have the size on it...
Any kind of bulb can be marked as a plant bulb and be in the plant spectrum. All light bulbs have what is known as a color temperature, which is where their color ranks on a scale called the Kelvin Scale. Most household lights are somewhere between 2500 and 3500 Kelvin (k) whereas plant bulbs are usually around 5500-7000, with 6000-6700 being ideal. 10,000k bulbs can also be used on a planted tank in conjunction with the 6000-6700k bulbs and tend to be more blue, giving the tank a more blue-green quality, which can be quite pleasing with live plants.
