Fluorescent bulbs.

[SimonWoodstock]

I found some cheap stuff to make my own light housing at lowes. When I go up there to get it this weekend I want to pick up a couple of 48" bulbs too.

What type shoulld I be looking for? They have a lot of different ones, and I'm sure most would not do well for plants.

thanks.

 

[TKOS]

Any flourescent bulb will help. But of course if you are actually making the effort then the best bulbs will be over 5000Kelvin. The closest you can get to 6500 K (which is daylight) the better. They will be much whiter bulbs.

 

[m3th0d]

Which one is better, a bulb with a higher wattage or a bulb with a higher Kelvin rating? Which one should I be more basing my decision on? For example I've seen 10W fourescent bulbs that had a 6500K spectrum and a 20W flourescent bulb that only had a 5000 spectrum. Which one is better for a planted tank...

 

[TKOS]

In that case I would probably go with the 20 watt bulb. 5000 and 6500 kelvin are very close and the higher wattage will be much better. If the bulb is over 5000 kelvin then I would look at the highest wattage you can get.

Of course this is for normal output flourescent bulbs. There are many other varieties that I am not really that sure about.

 

[djlen]

Wattage is wattage.......Kelvin is color spectrum.....apples and oranges.
Find a K rating in the 6000 - 7000 range(65 - 6700K being optimum IMO.....I like the color).
Plants don't care about color, IMO. I've got plants growing gangbusters in a 5 gal. with 3300K's over it. I don't like the yellow look, they don't care.
Pick your total wattage depending on what you want to grow and how much work/energy/time you want to put into the hobby.

Len

 

[RTR]

I agree w/djlen, good, sound advice.

 

[Captain Hook]

Same, good advice above.

Basically watts help to give you an idea of how much light is going into your tank. That's why the watts per gallon ratio exists. Kelvin rating gives you a bit of an idea of the colours the bulb is putting out but is not very important. It's more for our preference about how the tank looks.