Lighting Question
 

I'm going to try and set up my first planted freshwater tank and need a little advice on lighting requirements. My aquarium is 30" deep and I'm just looking for mainly low light plants to fill in the landscape and provide refuge for fish. I am wondering if T5's would do or T5 HO's or do I need to go the halide route? I'm leary about halide's as I'm running an acrylic aquarium and the heat aspect is worrisome. How many watts?
Ideas?

I'm no expert on freshwater put I was under the impression you could get away with a couple T8s for most plants.

What about LED lighting?

There is no need for halides even for high light plants.

You could get a 2 x 24" T5 retrofit kit.

Then if you want to upgrade to a high-light, CO2 injected system later you could add on two more 24" T5's.

For a 30" depth I would think that you would want to use T5NOs for low light plants. Halides are used on planted tanks at times, but usually only for exceptionally deep, high CO2, high light demand plants.

imo a single tube t8 may be enough, at least for low light plants

It definitely depends on what plants you want to keep. For plants that aren't very light-demanding (java, crypt, anubias, water sprite, etc.), I'd recommend a double T5HO (~3W/gal). However if you plan on keeping some cabomba, pennywort, cress, swords, etc., I would get at least a 4-bulb T5HO(~6W/gal) and use CO2 if you want them to thrive.:biggrin:

He would be struggling with algae if he used 2xT5HO without injecting CO2.

6W per gallon sounds like a lot for any plant, I use that much for my reef tank and it uses higher K bulbs than typical planted tanks and contains SPS corals.

Maybe...I don't. Mine is lightly-moderately planted with lots of fish and weekly water changes. I think at first when I switched to T5HO's I had an algae bloom, but after a month or two, it balanced out. In addition, there's a flourite base and I add fertilizer. If you have faster growing plants that can out-compete the algae for nutrients, using better lights, you should be okay(I used to have some Val. that I would trim a shopping bag full every week or two).

It does sound like a lot, however if you've ever tried to keep cabomba or microswords with <4W/gal., I think you would be surprised. Also, Agranized's tank is 30" high, in my opinion, you would need higher intensity lighting to have plants thrive(strong growth), not just survive.

By all means Agranized, try growing some plants with low output lights, but unless its just anubias or something, but from my experience, you might be growing more algae than anything. You can always upgrade your lighting if you experience what I have in the past. I'd also recommend (not required by what your looking for)a little CO2 (20-30ppm), you could try a DIY'er, super cheap and easy, but not too reliable, or pickup a used CO2 reg., solenoid, bubblecounter, diffuser, cylinder from someone on the site. All that being said, I have seen some low-light tanks with java, crypt and val. that seemed to do very well at <2W/gal. its just the tanks weren't 30" tall. Again, just my $0.02.:biggrin: