gary@grc.UUCP (Gary Sutcliffe) (04/14/88)
In article <3322@gryphon.CTS.COM> richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: > >i *think* it was about 1 flourescent watt per gallon, roughly; that >pretty close to what i use. That is about right. >Incandescent lights are a real bad idea, except for some special cases. > Incandescent lights by themselves are not too useful. Used with flourescent lights, they can really help a lot. Most of the flourescent lamps supplied with aquarium hoods have too much light in the blue-violet end of the spectrum. This make the fish look real nice, but plants also need light from the red end. Incandescent lamps do a better job producing this kind of light. I used to know a guy who was really an expert on aquatic plants. He used to win all of the trophies at our annual fish show by having all of his plants flower on THE DAY the judges where there. The rest of us were just lucky to keep plants alive. He used to wire two 60 watt incadescent in series to produce extra red light. They would then glow a kind of orange-red. He also used time clocks to vary the length of the day to simulate seasons. In the simulated late fall/ winter / early spring, the days would be short, and there would be more red light (sun lower on the horizon). During the "summer", the days would gradually get longer, and the light would be more shifted to the blue end. That was a long time ago, and I don't remember much more of the details. I now grow plants in only one tank (the rest are for raising fry, or holding killifish which like it too dark for plants). I have a flourescent lamp over it, but the plants did not do too well until I put a 15 watt incandescent lamp also. This produced too much light and I had algae problems, so I now turn off the flourescent about 1 day out of 3. There is a timer that leaves the lamps on about 15 hours a day. Oh yes, this is a 20 gallon tank. -- Gary Sutcliffe W9XT (414) 644-8700 GENROCO, Inc. Slinger, Wis. {ames, rutgers, harvard} uwvax!uwmcsd1!grc!gary Disclaimer (data compressed): "f+)Je\ ^_RMv9h|O |j8gELc=tAYw$pfs!1"