can u have too much light????

[newbie2004]

hello all...


i am in the process of setting up my 10 gal tank for plants... i want to be able to keep bright light plant and low light plants...

right now i have 2-23W phillips daylight cf (sprial type) in my hood...<< is this too much for a 10gal?

the light is on a timmer for 14hr/daily...
I have this tank set up for about 3-5 days...
DIY CO2 injection running for about 2day now..

plant: 1,moneywort,1-long hair grass, i think 1 low light plant(dunno want it call)




any reply is greatly thanx.....

 

[cloud]

Personally I keep my watts per gallon down more than most people as I really hate algea. I still have a very nicely planted tank but the plants grow slower than in other aquariums which is fine by me as it means their easier to keep under controll.

However your set up should be ok in the long run as roughly 2w per gal would be a healthy amount. But I'd make sure I have enough plants to make use of all the available light and CO2 as any excess will end up getting used by algea. I'd reduce the time down to 12 hrs max, maybe only 10 for now as you don't look too heavily planted.

Something for you to be very wary about though is the fact that if your tank is only 5 days old it can't be cycled yet (if you don't know about cycling a tank then check out the sticky about it on this site. It's VERY important). And if that's the case the high polution levels in your tank are really going to encourage algea blooms (and harm your fish!) so do lots of water changes and maybe keep the lights down to less than 10hrs and go real easy on plant nutrients until your cycled.

 

[Blinky]

The WPG rule doesn't really work with spirals, as RTR pointed out to me a while ago. Due to their shape, you lose quite a bit of light. As long as you're fertilizing the plants and using CO2, they should be fine. I'm amazed you found 23W spirals that fit in your hood - I'm using the Philips daylight mini-spirals (15W) because the bigger bulbs wouldn't fit.

 

[newbie2004]

Blinky....

u can make the 23w PHILLIPS work by removing the relector of the hood... it will fit prefectly in the hood.

 

[Blinky]

Hmm... you may have a different design than I do. Mine is a single molded piece of plastic that fits along the inside rim of the tank. It's raised in the centre to keep the lights away from the water, with a teeny door in the front for feeding. To do maintenance, there are hinges on the back that allow you to lift up the entire hood. The small spirals I have just barely fit, and there's nothing to remove behind them. Sounds like you got lucky with a hood they'll fit in!

 

[djlen]

Sounds like a really light plant mass for that light output. I would work at building your mass and/or buying more plants.
CO2 works great, but needs plants to work with. Balance is the key. Lots of light...lots of plants.
With good mass you should have no problems with that lighting in a 10gal.

Len

 

[anonapersona]

I have dual spiral 19 watts lights in my 10 gallon and it does fine. I dont even fertilize it much, only weekly and though I do have to scrape the glass occasionally, it isn't much. It is worse when the CO2 runs out, which it tends to do since this is the smallest tank I have and it gets very lttle attention.