# Lighting has me baffled..



## Mollicus (Jun 6, 2010)

3 weeks in... and my 10g planted tank is flourishing! Sort of!

My low-light plants seem to be thriving! I've had to trim the hornwort a handful of times already, and have transplanted a few handfuls of it to my 5g tank with shrimp... which has its own issues. I'll get to them in a moment 

The 10g tank has some rotala, ludwigia, anacharis, hornwort, and camboba. Everything but the anacharis has new growth and is just gorgeous for the most part. I have, however noticed that the bottom leaves on the ludwigia are turning brown and rotting.

I assume this is because not enough light is penetrating to the bottom? That would make sense why the stuff towards the top is green and bushy and lovely, but the stuff nearest to the substrate is falling apart?

The lighting I have is the same standard 15w fluorescent strip that came with the tank. I keep trying to read up on lighting, but there's a lot of information and I can't seem to make sense of any of it.

Would I be better off getting a strip that has fittings for incandescent and just using CFL bulbs in it? I have 3 or 4 strips from old tanks leftover, so would adding another strip of light be helpful, or will that just mean more light at the top of the tank? It seems like the light itself would need to be stronger to penetrate rather than just have another 15w bulb... or am I completely off base?

My 5g tank has no hood, no light strip... and I just have a desk lamp that happened to have a CFL bulb (the energy-saving twisted kind) in it and the hornwort in there seems to be going alright. It's not flourishing, but it's not dying either...

I guess what I'm trying to ask is in beginners terms... where do I start? Can I work with the materials I have, or do I need to just scrap the old strips and invest in new ones?

in a 5g tank, the watt-per-gallon rule is different from what i've gathered, but i can't seem to find out how!

thanks... hopefully someone can 'shed some light on things' for me.

-in the dark,
Mollicus


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## Bert H (Mar 2, 2004)

> The 10g tank has some rotala, ludwigia, anacharis, hornwort, and camboba. Everything but the anacharis has new growth and is just gorgeous for the most part. I have, however noticed that the bottom leaves on the ludwigia are turning brown and rotting.
> 
> I assume this is because not enough light is penetrating to the bottom? That would make sense why the stuff towards the top is green and bushy and lovely, but the stuff nearest to the substrate is falling apart?


Anachris is often sold as an easy plant, but imo, it is not, so I'm not surprised it's shriveling up on you. It does require more lighting than the others you have there. Yes, it is common for the bottoms to die off, especially when your lighting is on the low side. As you have figured out, the light penetration is definitely an issue in this case. If you keep that lighting, you can just live with pruning the tops and replanting them. Hornwort, does not develop roots, so you will either let it float, which I would not recommend with that low a lighting. Or you can weigh it down, or wedge it between rocks/wood, etc.

If yo want to upgrade the lighting for your ten, imo, the easiest and cheapest way to do it, is to look at the retrofits which you can get for your hood. AHS sells these, the owner is very helpful, and you don't need to know much about electricity to make it work. I had a 10 gal which I retrofitted my light strip into the 2x13W CF lighting. It worked very well for me, even growing some HC, until I tired of it being dug up by the fish  This is an easy tank to maintain with Excel or diy CO2.

As far as lighting and WPG, with smaller tanks, especially the 5-15gal sizes, it doesn't really work. Think of it in terms of absolute light intensity or energy. If you were to put a 15W bulb in a room as your source of illumination, how much illumination do you get? Very little. There just isn't that much light energy for the plants to use.

HTH.


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## doubleott05 (Jul 20, 2005)

Anachris is a cold water plant and in most cases will not do well in our warm planted aquariums.


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## asukawashere (Mar 11, 2009)

I use CFLs in some of my incandescent fixtures, it works fine. A 23W CFL makes about as much light as a 100W incandescent, and most incandescent fixtures are rated for 20-25W bulbs, so it's safe. 

Or, even adding one of those extra 15-20W fluorescent strip (especially one made for a planted tank) would be helpful. I have a 29g with nothing but 2x20W fluorescent strips and a little ambient/indirect sunlight, and it grows beautiful low- and medium-light plants


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## Mollicus (Jun 6, 2010)

(Look past the zippy danios lol) This is what gets me... from what I read Camboba is picky and a "medium" light plant, yet it's lovely from top to bottom! Look to the left, and the Ludwigia looks pretty sad about halfway down clear to the substrate...










Here's a full shot... the giant mass of hornwort has been trimmed back and parts transplanted to the shrimp tank, I'll have to get a shot of it later.










Thanks for the suggestions! I've got that website bookmarked, and if I fail miserably with trying to rig another light strip, I'll probably order a kit!


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## gwclark (May 10, 2010)

Another option besides the kit is this model from FishNeedIt. It's just slightly longer than your 10, but it does look nice.


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## flashbang009 (Aug 6, 2009)

I hate ludwigia for just that reason. I tried to grow it for so long, and the bottoms always end up that way. Now I've heard otherwise from other people, and certainly there are plenty of successes with it, but it just didn't work for me. Also, Hornwort is a simpler plant than the ludwigia i think, and so it grows in more diverse conditions and thrives better.


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