# Wanting yalls opinion



## jansley817 (Sep 14, 2010)

Ok to start I have a 55 gallon tank. It is just the standard 4 foot tank. What I have available for lighting right now is two 175 watt MH. I am planning on adding two 48" vho bulbs also. My idea is to have the vho bulbs come on two hours befor the mh, then run the mh for 2-4 hours and finish up with the vho for another few hours. I am not wanting to run the mh for the whole light cycle because the tank is in my sons bedroom, and it can get awful hot in there running mh for a full 8 hours. The only plants currently in the tank are glossostigma. Let me know how yall think this will work out.


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## Seattle_Aquarist (Mar 7, 2008)

Hi jansley817,

I currently have a 30 gallon with 72 watts of power compact (T5) and a 45 with 96 watts of power compact. I am looking at setting up a 75 gallon with either 4 X 55 watt power compact or possibly 3 or 4 X 54 watt of T5HO.

Tom Barr did a talk here at GSAS Tuesday night. He discussed the advantages of a "light limited CO2 enhanced" environment for planted aquariums.

Depending upon how high above the aquarium you have your lighting located, it seems excessive to me. If you can grow glosso well why do you need all this light? I certainly hope you are using CO2.


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## jansley817 (Sep 14, 2010)

The reason I am using the halides is because I had them left over from my reef tank. It is the only lighting i have. They are installed 14" above the water with fans blowing in fresh air to keep it cool. This is a brand new tank set up and the glosso was just added yesterday. For time being I will be using diy co2. Eventually I plan on adding pressurized as funds will allow.


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## jansley817 (Sep 14, 2010)

oh and to make thing a little more clear I do not plan on running the halides and vho bulbs at the same time.


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## Seattle_Aquarist (Mar 7, 2008)

Hi jansley817,

If it were me, I would spend the money for CO2 before adding the additional light. I did DIY for about 4 - 5 months when I started with planted aquariums. I wanted to see if I could grow plants and if I enjoyed this aspect of the hobby. Long story short - CO2 makes a big difference on the success of a planted aquarium and yes, a planted / aquascaped plant is a lot of fun. DIY CO2 is OK but I found it time consuming, messy, and smelly as well as erratic output. I should have changed to pressurized much, much, sooner.

BTW, what spectrum are your MH bulbs?


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## Andy Ritter (Nov 26, 2008)

Hey jansley817,

I agreee with Roy. I have a 75 gallon with two 48" 110 watt VHO bulbs and the plants do fine. However, I have pressurized CO2 and I know that the plants wouldn't do well at all with DIY CO2. The fluctuations of CO2 in the water will most definitely cause you serious algae problems with that much light. In fact, since you are saying that you don't like the heat from the halides, I would suggest only using the VHO lights. You could sell the halides in order to get the funds needed to set up your pressurized CO2.

Hope I've helped.

Andy


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## jansley817 (Sep 14, 2010)

rats, not what i wanted to hear. Well look like things will be changing in the near future.


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## bosmahe1 (May 14, 2005)

If you want to run DIY(yeast) CO2, you will need to keep the lighting a lot lower to avoid algae. If you are going to be changing your lighting at all, you might want to look at T5HO lighting. It's much cheaper and efficient compared to metal halide. Yeah I know, the shimmering effect of the MH's is truly awesome but, changing those expensive bulbs every 6 months and dealing with the heat will get old real fast. Even with T5s, you won't want to run more than one bulb with DIY CO2. When you get pressurized, 2 bulbs on a 55 gallon will be plenty.


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## fishyjoe24 (May 18, 2010)

hi John with that much light I would get presured c02 before adding more lighting.. with that much lighting it would be sure high light. plus you say it's from a reef setup. by any chance do you know the color spectrum(K) rating of the bulbs? to grow plants you want to stay in the 6,500-10,000 color spectrum(k) range.


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## jansley817 (Sep 14, 2010)

they are 10k bulbs.


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## fishyjoe24 (May 18, 2010)

jansley817 said:


> they are 10k bulbs.


you're good to go, but i would try finding a 6,700k so you have both ends of the color spectrum.
that's a lot of light.. have fun with it.


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