# 36 Gallon Lighting



## Jill90 (Dec 18, 2011)

I have looked all over the place, and I cannot seem to find the perfect lighting for my tank. I have a 36 gallon bowfront tank. All I want to do right now is grow low light plants. I wouldn't mind having moderate plants later on, but I do not want to spend too much on a light fixture, and its difficult to put anything else on top with the canopy that came with my tank.
What I have bought right now is this:
http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=11248153
It has a 6.7k bulb and a colormax bulb. They are both 18w. So that makes it 1 watt per gallon which I read is good enough for growing low light plants.
I wanted your opinions though. Is this good enough?
Right now all I have is an anubias plant and an onion plant. So far they do not seem to be doing that well. I also only have them in gravel, so that may be the case. If so I will post another topic in that section.
Let me know what you guys think!


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

Jill, welcome to APC!

The old watt per gallon rule doesn't apply to modern light fixtures like your T5. Two T5 tubes over your tank should be plenty for low and medium light plants. Unfortunately, not all tubes produce light that is useful to plants, and Colormax tubes are one. You are essentially just running one tube over your tank as far as the plants are concerned. It would be better to replace the Colormax tube with another 6700K.

Without going into light spectrum and PAR, 2 6700K tubes should give you plenty of light for what you want to do.


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## Jill90 (Dec 18, 2011)

Oh really? Awesome, I can easily get another 6700k bulb. Which should be good enough to help my plants that I have now! Do you suggest that I get a different substrate and then fertilizer, or is the gravel ok for the low lighting I want?


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## Touch of Sky (Dec 19, 2011)

The anubias should not be planted, but the rhizome should be tied to either wood or a rock. The rhizome should be above the substrate. The onion shouldn't be planted too deep. Keep the top 1/3rd of the bulb above the substrate. If you want to grow low light plants, the gravel will be fine. You can use root tabs under it to give the plants a boost.

I hope this helps


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## Jill90 (Dec 18, 2011)

Thanks for the help!
Are you guys sure that 2x18W bulbs are good enough for my tanks?
I switched out the colormax so now both of the bulbs are 6,700k. I did not notice much of a difference, but I'm not sure if you would anyways.
Is this definitely enough light? I also bought some plant supplement today that I will add once a week as it suggests.


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## NGermany (Jun 24, 2011)

it might not look that bright to your eyes, but thats where you get into the collor spectrem. the color max that you had uses differnt colors on the spectrem that plants dont use but it helps with the fish color so they look brighter. i have a 37 tall that i i have sword plants in and they grew fine in low light with ferts. now i have an extra light on top and they are much better looking. but you should be fine around 1 watt for low light plant


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## Jill90 (Dec 18, 2011)

Thanks for the advice guys! I actually just bought a glass top for my tank, so now I will be able to put my other fixture on it, which is only a 17 watt, but it should still help! I did read that glass tops can reduce the light, but hopefully not by much!


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