# Please help with lighting for plants!!!



## fish fanatic (Jul 24, 2007)

I have many tanks, but never tried too many live plants. 
I figured i will give it a try, but lighting i am very lost on , theres way too many choices.!

could someone help me with choices, (specifically) 

I have a 20 gallon and two 30 gallon tanks i am putting live plants in so what type of lights should i get?


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## Guest (Apr 8, 2008)

What type of plants do you want? If you just want low light plants like Java fern, Anubias, and Anacharis, you'd be fine with about 20 watts over the 20g and around 30 watts over the 30g tanks. But if you want more variety, you'll need more wattage. If you want to be around midrange, shoot for about 40 watts over the 20g and 60 watts over the 30g tanks. That would allow you to grow some stem plants and low light plants.

You should choose which plants you want or atleast know what plants need what lighting so you don't buy high light plants and have them die in low lighting.

This site has the different categories of plants: http://www.plantgeek.net/plantguide_cat.php?category=1. The watt per gallon rule isn't a very good one, but to keep it simple, very low light would be less than 1 watt per gallon, low would be about 1wpg to 2. Medium would be 2-3, high would be 3-4. The other categories (like medium-high) fall in between there somewhere. Anything over about 2.5wpg will require co2 injection, so I'm not sure if you want to get into that or not.

Basically, you choose plants based on lighting......not really the other way around, unless you know which plants you want and can buy lighting accordingly.


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## glenita (Sep 4, 2008)

Fluorescent tubes or lamps are more efficient and do not produce nearly the amount of heat standard light bulbs do. The 20 gallon should have two 15 watt fluorescent lamps (5500K), the 30 gallon should have one 20 watt bulb (6700K). Both tanks have DIY CO2 and use the Fluorish line of fertilizers.
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Glenita


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## oblongshrimp (Sep 3, 2008)

I would check out the Coralife Aqualight T5 Aquarium Lights. They are a nice slim black light that works really well for plants. One of these lights should be plenty of light for your setup. Since they are T5 lights and have good reflectors your getting all the light you can from the bulb. If you decide to start adding CO2 in the future you could just buy a second light.


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