Metal Halide Lighting for a 100 Gallon Planted Aquarium?

[Bazzer501]

Hi All,
New member on here!
I have kept tropicals for over 15 years, at one3 stage had 6 x 4' long aquariums! then moved onto Marines and now want to get back to tropicals albeit with a well planted aquarium.

I've been out of the tropical loop for some time so am a bit rusty but here's the plan.
I plan to use my ex marine aquarium, this has a great cabinet and trim and fits my lounge beautifully. Its open topped 4' x 2' x 2' with a true 24" water depth and a volume of around 100 gallons, it also has a sump of around 20 gallons.

Original lighting was a suspended Arcadia 4 with 2 x 150 watt metal halides and 2 x 39 watt TS tubes. I would like to change the bulbs to Arcadia 5,200 K tropical bulbs and the tubes to 'plant' tubes.

I'm still reading up on it but plan to use the correct media etc as a growing medium in the aquarium and also to use C02 (although I've no idea how much to use for a 100 gallon aquarium!). I plan to use the sump for biological media, heaters and UV along with a freshwater auto top up system.

As I said I'm open to sugesstions but would like any comments on the lighting..or would I be better selling the Arcadia 4 and going for just tubes ( in which case I would need a lid making for the aquarium).

Look forward to hearing from you.

Bazzer.

 

[ceg4048]

Hello,
Welcome to the forum!

Use any lights you like. So-called "Plant" tubes have nothing to do with plants. They have only to do with having yellow and green color, which some find more pleasing to the eye than Marine tubes, which tend to be a harsh Blue. Furthermore any given so-called 5200K bulbs doesn't actually radiate at 5200K and actually is a different color depending on what brand bulb you buy, so this is another illusion.

At the end of the day you are the one looking at the tank and so you have to decide what looks beautiful and what looks ugly. What you need to worry about is that you do not have too much light, because that then demands that you inject huge quantities of CO2. If you're just starting out, better to use just a single halide bulb and maybe use the T5s if you find that the spread of light uneven.

Please also visit the Tutorial section of the forum and in particular, please review the article Setting up a 'higher' tech planted tank

Cheers,