Watts per gallon?

[blakeoe]

Im new to aquariums and have planted some bulbs from walmart a few weeks ago in my 55 gallon tank. Some lillys and apongetons. The two lillys are about 6 or 7 inches high. one has one shoot that goes all the way to the top of the water. The aponogetons are only about 3-4 inches high i think b/c my angles are eating them. I recently bought a bunch more aponogeton bulbs to line the background of the tank. I have 2 fixtures with some old 18 inch 15 watt flurescent bulbs that i keep on for about 7-8 hours a day. I saw on here before, someone said that you should have a certain amount of watts per gallon. For my setup how many watts should i have and how long should i keep them on per day? and is there a certain type of bulb i should use?

[blakeoe]

ANYONE?

[MyraVan]

I didn't answer before because I have no aponogetons. But I'll have a go at answering and show you how you can get the info yourself.

First, I looked up Aponogeton plants at http://www.tropica.com/default.asp
For almost all of them, lighting levels are listed as medium-very high.
Next I checked Plantgeek, http://www.plantgeek.net/plantguide_...&filterby=
Here, most of the Aponogetons are listed as needing medium light.

I would say that medium light is on the order of 2WPG, which is 110W for your 55 gallon tank. This is much higher than the 30W you have now! In fact I have 30W on my 20 gallon tank and consider it a fairly low light setup (although I am managing to grow a decent range of plants in it...)

Based on this I would predict that the Aponogetons wouldn't do that well in your setup, but sometimes aquatic plants manage to do very well when you expect them to do poorly, or vice versa.

[Damon]

Aponogetons will do well with very little light, meaning they won't die. The WILL grow VERY slowly. 1.5wpg is the minimum I would use but thats the minimum I would use on any tank. 2wpg is a good spot to be at and 2.5-3wpg will grow almost anything but the most difficult of plants. For a 55 gallon tank you have a cpl of alternatives for lighting. a PC fixture (2x65 would be great). Or 4 normal flourescent bulbs would be OK.

[blakeoe]

What type of bulbs am i looking for? Is it your normal everyday household bulb or is it some sort of special type made for plants or aquariums?

[MyraVan]

You can buy fancy bulbs, but they really aren't much better, if any better at all, than normal household bulbs. If you can find GE Cool White bulbs, these are good.

Probably the best is to buy different kinds of bulbs, to make sure you cover as much of the spectrum as you can. Like if you had 4 tubes, you could get 2 Cool Whites, 1 Daylight, and 1 tri-phoshor bulb. The Whilte bulbs, as they guggest, are white (I mean, have a whiteish light), the daylight bulbs are a little bit yellow, but not too much, and the tri-phoshor are pink.

[Damon]

Cool white have a K rating of approx 4300. Very yellowish in a tank. You're looking for 6500-10000K the lower being white the higher getting pinkish to bluish. GE makes a 9325K bulb that runs about 5 dollars US. Easy to find and works great for NO flourescent. As for compact bulbs go, I'd shoot for 6500K