The 55g tank that I am planting and turning into an angelfish tank was once a saltwater tank. I know that saltwater tanks have different lighting requirements than freshwater so I thought I'd throw this out here...
I have 2 - 54w 10,000k bulbs for daytime and 2 - 54w 460nm moonlights.
Anyone see any issue with this? Too strong of lights? Too weak?
those light are a little too strong for plants but you could go with the suggestions above.plus don't throw the moonlights away you still can use them if you wanna show your fishes at night.who knows the coloration might look nicer with it :-D
I converted my reef tank to a freshwater tank. The hood was built in with 2 55w 10k lights. I used one 10k for about 3 weeks before I started to have a serious string algae problem.
So I went out and got a 65w 6700 light and run just the 6700 light and my algae disappeared.
The 10k lights are going to encourage algae growth for sure, you can get away with using them for the time being if money is an issue. My plants still grew pretty well, but algae just grew better.
I concur with the suggestions, but others have not noticed something. I suspect you have T5 fixtures, since the 48-inch tubes are 54w and that means T5 HO fluorescent. This is way too much light. A couple options.
First, can you have just one of the tubes light by itself? Some fixtures will, some won't; if one tube is removed the other may not light. This would allow you to use just one tube, and one full spectrum (around 6500K) would work in T5 HO, but not two tubes.
Second, if you can find T5 NO tubes, they are approximately equal to the T8 (regular) tubes so two of them would be OK. T5 NO [=normal output, as opposed to HO which is high output] tubes are hard to find though, all the stores around me carry HO but no NO.
Third, another fixture, either a single T5 or a dual T8.
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