# let me see if I uderstand this



## Ligyron (Mar 6, 2016)

If we are growing plants in emersed culture, everything else being equal (brightness, etc) would it be better to use warmer whites as opposed to daylight and beyond? How warm? 

I find cheap stuff down to 2700 even with inexpensive LED's at Home Depot and such.

Or would a mix of 5600 and warm white be a better choice? This would be in a clip lamp bonnet with three lights on 24 in Sterlight container.

Or should I go with tubes if a mix so the different lights were more even in distribution?

Thanks, great stuff here!


----------



## Seattle_Aquarist (Mar 7, 2008)

Hi Ligyron,

Along with my tanks I keep an emersed 'plant bank' of harder to find species. Typically these are species I haven't tried yet (but want to try) or backups for species in the tanks so if the species dies out I have more to try.

My current set-ups are single standard shop light with a warm white and a daylight lamp in each fixture over a 4 foot shelf. I haven't tried the LED shop lights yet but I suspect they would work just fine.

My current emersed set-up showing the humidomes with various species


----------



## Diana K (Dec 20, 2007)

Plants use the same portions of the spectrum emersed or under water. 
The depth of our aquariums means very little to how much of the spectrum is lost passing through the water. 

I have generally used a plant specific bulb plus either cool white or daylight in most fixtures. This supplies the blue and red wavelengths that plants use the most (the plant bulb) and the other wavelenths that we see better (the cool or daylight bulb). 

A K value is just a number that means something to our eyes, but does not really tell you which wavelengths the bulb actually puts out. If you can research a bulb and get a PAR value, that would tell you if a particular bulb is good for plants or not.


----------

