# 4.3 wpg lighting and plants



## GeminiPrincess (Oct 1, 2010)

I won a 24" Hagen HO T5 fixture today from my lfs and added it with the 65w coralife light. Looks great, but wondering if 4.3 wpg is enough for something like micro sword or anything for the foreground besides anubias.

Specs

26g BF 
Coralife Aqualight 65w
Hagen HO T5 fixture with 24w 18k Power Glo & 24w 6500 Life Glo bulbs
Fully planted - thinking about redoing some of the plants
DIY CO2
2 Calico Platys
3 LF Danios
5 Glofish
4 Guppies
2 otos
1 Balloon Belly Molly
1 Dwarf Gourami 
4 neons that huddle at the bottom - pretty boring fish might remove them.


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## kert1224 (Nov 22, 2010)

4.3 is alot of light, but your 18k bulb in your new light wont help your plants at all, the 6500 bulb is perfect tho, 2 questions for you. how deep is your tank and what bulb do u have in your coralife (assuming cf) light


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## GeminiPrincess (Oct 1, 2010)

kert1224 said:


> 4.3 is alot of light, but your 18k bulb in your new light wont help your plants at all, the 6500 bulb is perfect tho, 2 questions for you. how deep is your tank and what bulb do u have in your coralife (assuming cf) light


oops the other is a 24w 6700 life glo
One 65 watt 6700K compact fluorescent 
the 18k bulb came with the light


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## mfgann (Oct 21, 2010)

Wow.. congratulations. That is really a great win!

I should preclude this by saying I haven't done a whole lot with planted tanks, but I've been reading up a bit, and heading that way. Maybe someone with some more experience will weigh in.

First, I would say kert1224 is right. The 18K won't help your plants a lot, though it will affect them, so it'll kind of be a juggling act figuring out how much it is affecting it. 

The old way of measuring Watts per gallon is not accurate. The T5 bulbs are more effecient, so they are actually putting out more light per watt than the old T12 bulbs. The general rule of thumb for planted tanks was 2W/gal for low, and 4W/gal for a pretty high-light tank. The depth also affects it, and I don't have the experience to weigh in on that.

I think the biggest problem you'll have is that is quite a bit of light, unless you have a really deep tank. With that much light your plants are going to gulp down nutrients and CO2. If you start fertilizing and dosing CO2 (flourish and florish excel for the easy liquid bottles), you start a delicate balancing act that can cause a bad algae bloom. I think it may be a bit hard for a beginner.. so read up lots. Don't wanna discourage you, but I do want you to be aware of the things to look out for. I wish I could win some new lights for my 30G!

Good luck!


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## mk4gti (Jun 15, 2010)

4.3 is a lot of light, you might end up with tons of algea. are your plants not growing? if you dont need the new light dont put it on the tank, or better yet, use it to set up another tank


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## susankat (Nov 15, 2008)

Also with that kind of lighting you will need pressurized co2 and a good regime of ferts.


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## GeminiPrincess (Oct 1, 2010)

mfgann said:


> Wow.. congratulations. That is really a great win!
> 
> I should preclude this by saying I haven't done a whole lot with planted tanks, but I've been reading up a bit, and heading that way. Maybe someone with some more experience will weigh in.
> 
> ...


I know, I was ecstatic, never won anything before lol. It is 21" tall. Where can I find good information on how to determine lighting and what is what? I mainly find information for reef tanks instead of fresh planted.


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## GeminiPrincess (Oct 1, 2010)

susankat said:


> Also with that kind of lighting you will need pressurized co2 and a good regime of ferts.


Freshwater Planted Aquariums: Red Sea Turbo CO2 Bio-System
Would that work for CO2?


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## susankat (Nov 15, 2008)

It would work parttime but it isn't a stable situation for co2. It causes fluctuations in the levels.


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## James0816 (Jun 19, 2009)

Agree with others that you will need a good course of CO2 and steady diet of ferts with that lighting. You will be growing some beautiful plants with that that's for sure.

But...the 18k bulb though...definately want to replace that for freshwater. ;o)


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

I have that Red Sea system on my 29gal. It is nothing more than a DIY system that has a powerhead with it. I bought it for how well it dissolves the CO2 and hook up my own CO2 mixture to it.

I would agree that it would probably not suffice.


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## GeminiPrincess (Oct 1, 2010)

James0816 said:


> Agree with others that you will need a good course of CO2 and steady diet of ferts with that lighting. You will be growing some beautiful plants with that that's for sure.
> 
> But...the 18k bulb though...definately want to replace that for freshwater. ;o)


Well Shoot, Is there a cheap way to do the right type of CO2? Or a cheap place to buy it? On top of that, if i could find a way to buy it, I have no idea what I would need to buy. Thanks!


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

A DIY system may work, you just may need multiple bottles. I have that Red Sea system and 1, 1-gallon bottle of a mixture going and my drop checker is always green now. Not sure if it has anything to do with the Red Sea thing or not, but it does diffuse the CO2 very well. Instead of standard bubbles, I get about 50 tiny bubbles for every one stardard bubble, that mostly dissapate before they reach the surface. I'm at about 3WPG.


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## James0816 (Jun 19, 2009)

You could go small pressurized too with a paintball setup. I think those regs run around 100 or so. Don't quote me on that. I believe for the price of those, you can get a bottom line regulator setup for full pressurized like 5-10-20lb canisters.


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## GeminiPrincess (Oct 1, 2010)

jrman83 said:


> A DIY system may work, you just may need multiple bottles. I have that Red Sea system and 1, 1-gallon bottle of a mixture going and my drop checker is always green now. Not sure if it has anything to do with the Red Sea thing or not, but it does diffuse the CO2 very well. Instead of standard bubbles, I get about 50 tiny bubbles for every one stardard bubble, that mostly dissapate before they reach the surface. I'm at about 3WPG.


If i set up like 3 large Gatorade bottles and connected them all, would that work? Or should I set up 2 separate DIY and have it that way?


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## beaslbob (May 29, 2009)

Or you could just limit the lights to being on only a couple of hours per day.


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## aQualung (Oct 20, 2010)

At the risk of starting a debate why is W/g the most accepted measure for lighting?
To me the main thing that matters is the depth of a tank.

If you use the same lighting in a 30 gal tall vs. a 30 gal long tank, the long is going to be getting a lot more intensity at the substrate level than the other. We don't measure lighting in ppm (same concept as W/g) for the same reason we don't measure ammonia in parts per inches deep. The units just don't tell the story of how the numbers really are.

Just my .02 :goldfish:


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## James0816 (Jun 19, 2009)

Yep, the WPG rule is old school and doesn't apply to the shallow tanks. Take that and top it off with today's technology with HO bulbs, it's just outdated. But, since most of us don't have access to PAR meters, we still use it as a guideline for the deeper tanks.


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## beaslbob (May 29, 2009)

James0816 said:


> Yep, the WPG rule is old school and doesn't apply to the shallow tanks. Take that and top it off with today's technology with HO bulbs, it's just outdated. But, since most of us don't have access to PAR meters, we still use it as a guideline for the deeper tanks.


Good points.

but the wpg rule is somewhat self correcting.

Given a set amount a gallons, A taller tank has less surface area. So if the lighting match that smaller area the intensity at the surface is higher and therefore the light penetrates further.

my .02


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## mfgann (Oct 21, 2010)

Well, I think what some people do to start out is use flourish excel to dose the CO2 their system needs. It will definitely be more expensive in the long run, but could get you started with CO2. Flourish (not the excel, but the normal flourish) is a general purpose fertilizer that a lot of people use as well. I think people that go very high-tech wind up using dry fertilizers and a pressurized CO2 system, so perhaps that should go on the future plans? If you really want to avoid all that, you could turn off enough of the lights to go back to 2-2.5W/G until you're ready to upgrade things.


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## GeminiPrincess (Oct 1, 2010)

I am going to go back to the previous lighting that I had which was 83w and DIY Co2 until I can get the money together for pressurized. Didn't have a algae problem with that except on my anubias. Thanks all for all the wonderful advice and help!


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

FWIW, I have a 75gal that has a 260W light on it with very little issue. No CO2. It does have a decent amount of plants, but they don't require CO2 to thrive. Not sure if it is in the same area as yours, given your tank size.


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## GeminiPrincess (Oct 1, 2010)

jrman83 said:


> FWIW, I have a 75gal that has a 260W light on it with very little issue. No CO2. It does have a decent amount of plants, but they don't require CO2 to thrive. Not sure if it is in the same area as yours, given your tank size.


Well as of right now the tank has 83w on it with no Co2. I would really like to get that other light back on so I am going to try and get pressurized otherwise ill most likely end up selling that light - which i don't especially want to do.


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

If it is a useful light I wouldn't sell it. You may get another tank. Never know.....


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## GeminiPrincess (Oct 1, 2010)

jrman83 said:


> If it is a useful light I wouldn't sell it. You may get another tank. Never know.....


Thats what I was thinking, though I still don't know very much about lighting. When I went to pick up the Cherry Shrimp just now the woman had a fish room with like 20 tanks in it and was using the light i won for all of her tanks, so i figured it was a fairly good product


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## Gizmo (Dec 6, 2010)

I've got pressurized CO2 using a cannibalized keg tap for the 10 lb bottle and high-pressure regulator, low pressure regulator (needle valve), check valve, and CO2 tubing from Rex Grigg (see URL below), a RedSea CO2 reactor ($25 used, still expensive), and a POS plastic bubble counter from PetMountain for my CO2 setup. I have a RedSea BioMax CO2 system sitting in storage that I started out with, and it was definitely a waste of money. I would say if you're going to go CO2, go big and don't look back. I found a very cool-looking and inexpensive paintball CO2 setup at the following forum:

Paintball Co2 Injection DIY Setup

And you can build a DIY reactor or buy a prefab one from Rex Grigg at the following website:

The Best Aquarium Regulator & CO2 Parts

As for the lights - I use a Nova Extreme T5HO with a 24W 16k Daylight and a 24W 10k Full Spectrum (I think) for my 30 gallon tall, and my plants are maintaining their current state of happiness due to my reluctance to dump massive amounts of dry ferts into the tank (they consume all the nitrate in the tank and then some, and I dose 4x the chelated iron listed on the Flourish bottle for that size tank and my concentrations are regularly below 1.0 ppm). Not familiar with the WPG rule and several other facets of this discussion, but I'm betting if you go pressurized CO2 you'll want that extra light, otherwise stay with your original setup.


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