# Strange types of lighting for plant growth..



## cheesekipper (Apr 25, 2010)

Hey there so in the process of planning my planted turtle tank, already have the turtles and I'm bumping upto a bigger 75G tank and going to attempt to grow a whole ton of plants (going to be alot of work with the turtles I know! ). As you know reptiles have specific requirements and I wondered how well my current reptile lighting will transfer over to plants I'm thinking of having the two 60W incandescent spot lights (basking) 2X 26W CFL reptiglo UVB lights and 2X54W T-5 and pressurized CO2 injection.

Any thoughts on how the incandescent and the UVB CFL will assist the T-5s in plant growth?


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## fkshiu (Apr 22, 2010)

The 2 x 54W T5s should be able to grow almost anything you want. The incandescent reptile light will add nothing but heat.


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## cheesekipper (Apr 25, 2010)

Thanks for the help that's great I'm actually thinking of going with the 4X65W CFL coralife


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## keitarosan (Apr 21, 2010)

fkshiu said:


> The 2 x 54W T5s should be able to grow almost anything you want. The incandescent reptile light will add nothing but heat.


exactly.....


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## 2wheelsx2 (Apr 21, 2010)

cheesekipper said:


> Thanks for the help that's great I'm actually thinking of going with the 4X65W CFL coralife


With that level of lighting, I think you're going to be creating more work for yourself than you want. The turtles will generate a high nutrient load so with CO2 and high light, you may not get the result you want. I prune over 1 lb of java fern out of my 125 gallon using 144 watts of NO t5 each week on average (pressurized CO2). So depending what type of plants you plan to put in that tank, you can do the growth projections yourself.

In most planted tank forums now, the trend is moving away from high light because of the maintenance involved and the tenuous balance that needs to be achieved between nutrient load and growth in the tanks. People are finding it to be too much work. I hope I'm not discouraging you, but rather, I'm hoping to point out to you more light != better plants all the time.


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## cheesekipper (Apr 25, 2010)

Hmm that is very interesting in that case it looks like it'll be best for me to stick with the 2x54W T5's. I was gonna do an EI fertilizing regime (when I finally get my head round it) as I wanted to grow things like dwarf hair grass


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## 2wheelsx2 (Apr 21, 2010)

As long as you're doing CO2, most anything can be grown ith your 2x54 t5 (NO or HO?).


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## cheesekipper (Apr 25, 2010)

Thanks for the help, probably HO what do you think?


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## 2wheelsx2 (Apr 21, 2010)

HO with proper reflectors are very efficient lights. But my 125 gallon uses the Coralife NO t5 with the lousy mylar reflectors and I grow lots of plants with CO2. I think as long as you meet the min. light requirements, using CO2 and dosing EI will get you better results than any fancy lights (I'm one to talk though, as I am looking at MH and Tek for my new tank )


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## cheesekipper (Apr 25, 2010)

Haha that's the problem hey, well it's certainly an economical option to go with coralife NO t5's so if you say it's working decently for you in a 125G then that sounds great, dosing EI is going to take a while to get my head around. Got to say though that metal halide as expensive as they are I didn't realize until a friend told me recently but you get that wonderful shimmer, he's going with LED for the same reason I'm excited to see how it turns out!


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## 2wheelsx2 (Apr 21, 2010)

Yes, the MH and LED are point light sources, which will give you the wonderful diffraction patterns we see as shimmer or rippling of light. I am thinking MH for my next tank for that reason.


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