need help bad

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stephenray75

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Mar 9, 2004
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I have running around trying out different lights on my tank. its a 90 gallon with sand substrate. Im wanting to add plants but i dont think my lights are bright enough. I have a 48inch shop light with 2 philips daylight bulbs. the tan doesnt seem very bright. what can i add so i can have all sorts of plants?

thanks :bowing:
 
If you want enough light to grow an assorted variety of plants, you'll want a minimum of 2w per gallon (about 180 watts) hanging over your tank. ahsupply.com has a 2x96 watt kit that works very well for a planted tank but it costs over $100. If price is an issue, if you can squeeze another shoplight underneath your hood, that would be enough light for most low to mid light plants.
 
I believe a normal 4 foot shop light would be 40 W each, so with two lights, it's only 80 W over a 90g tank. I'd at least try to push it up to four 40 watt tubes, so that gives you just under 2 watts per gallon. Since it still is a bit on the low end, you'd have to choose some of the more low light tolerant plants (i.e. Anacharis, H. polysperma, Java Fern, Java Moss etc)
 
It might be a good idea to figure out what type of tank you'd like before investigating lighting.
You could keep a lot of low-light to medium-light plants in a fairly low-maintenance tank using shoplights and low/no CO2, or you could purchase a PC fixture with, for example, 3 x 96W PC bulbs that would allow you to keep more demanding plants, but it would also mean injecting CO2 and worrying more about fertilization and pruning.
 
im thinking of getting JEBO48inch 2X96watt pc lights. it comes ready for salt water but i figured i could get rid of the acintics and keep the 12K daylight bulbs. This should work right?
 
That should give you enough light to keep many types of plants. I recently bought a similar fixture and did exactly what you describe - changed the actinic for a 10 000K bulb.
 
Or for ~$14 (US...plus bulbs) you can buy two more shoplights and have 240watts which would give you plenty of options.
 
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