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Staggered lighting photo period..

3K views 16 replies 9 participants last post by  smit3183 
#1 ·
I currently run one 48' 6500k T8 bulb on my 55g that I run 9hrs a day, I have mostly anubias couple amazon swords and floating wisteria and pennywort. Growth is very slow as expected but plants looks nice and green, I fertilize once a week with flourish comp. My question is I also have a double strip fixture and have used in the past and every time I used it BBA became a problem and browning on my floating plants, I ran it for 8hrs a day and increased fertilizer dosage to twice a week. If I do a 4 hour on 2 hour off and 4 hour on lighting period will this possibly stop the algae? I have a community tank with about 30 mostly small fish. Ph is 8.2-8.4, dh is 12 and temperature is 76-77.
 
#13 ·
With fluorescent tubes, wattage is fixed to tube length. They are not like CFLs were you can get different values.

A 48" T8 is 32 watts each.


@smit3183

I have a 125 gallon which is only 2 inches deeper. Having the exact same issue with dual T8's. (A 125g is 6 feet long)

I'm about at the point where I'm going to just let Water Sprite cover the surface and only have ultra low light plants below (Java Fern & Anubias).

The only way I could make it work I think would be to elevate the lights, but I'm not sure how to go about doing that. I don't want them hanging from my ceiling.

If only they made affordable single T5HO fixtures. That's 1.5x the intensity of a T8 and would be perfect I think.
 
#7 ·
Yeah, I'll just stick with the single. Just seeing the plants growing so slow can become a little frustrating at times when you hear others on this board getting much faster grow. I've never been able to get balance with 2 bulbs, it never worked for me. It was frustrating seeing my pennywort stems melt so much from the acclimating to my light. I had bought like 6 bunches and now I have just a couple stems that didn't completely melt and a lot of little twigs. Seems as if they've finally adjusted as I'm getting growth now and no more melting. I have it floating
 
#8 ·
Oh, I figure that if they are growing, all is good. CO2 and high light just sounds like more of a hassle and if the balance is off for any reason, things can go south very fast... I would prefer to have some time to think and make small adjustments as needed.

Of course if you had plants that need the high light levels, that's a whole other matter.

I've floated all my pennywort, I prefer it that way now.

Jeff.
 
#9 ·
When I had my 55 gallon up and running I had it with a dual T8 fixture. The bulbs were just GE natural daylight bulbs 6500k.

I had the best I can remember Pennywort floating along with by Jungle vals on the surface (they just grew that tall and never stopped!). I would tend to get bba on the floating plants from time to time. Through here's the thing *if* I didn't have the floating plants I would get the bba on my rooted plants like crazy so I just it alone on the floaters as they would seem to manage.
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#15 ·
Reading through the messages, I don't think I saw a suggestion to raise the lights higher or try window screening covering the light's output. I would try the screening first, then maybe a foot higher on the lights without the screening. Remember, too, that, especially with plants that are growing slow, it may take a little time before you get the results.

Steven
 
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