New Lighting Scheme...

[Manrock]

Hi all, I'm about to upgrade the lighting on my 170 litre tank from an Arcadia T8 Luminaire to a T5 overhead.

Rescape (How to avoid mess and death). | UK Aquatic Plant Society

The rescape has gone well except that the Pogostemon erectus and helferi have not faired well. While trying to discover why I realised that for the past couple of years I had worked out incorrectly that my lighting was 'moderate' (I had divided the volume by the watts - idiot!) when in fact it is very low (0.25wpl).

I now plan to add T5 lights to bring it up to around 0.5wpl but I'm worried about how this might adversely effect the 'balance' of my tank if I don't do it correctly. I currently run a photo-period of 10hrs with a two hour 'black out' in the middle. I have CO2 and roughly follow Barr's 'poor man dosing regime' (low ferts and monthly 20% water changes).

Any pointers to help me get this right from the start? What should the new photo-period be?

Also I'm planning to buy a 4 tube 39W overhead but will only run 2 tubes as 'daylight'. I plan to run the other 2 tubes as 'moonlight' lighting for a few hours after main 'lights out' using Marine Blue T5 tubes. Would this have any photo effect on the plants?

Cheers

Steve

 

[Arana]

interested to know why you opt for a 2 hour blackout in the middle of your photo period?

 

[Manrock]

nterested to know why you opt for a 2 hour blackout in the middle of your photo period?

It's just another weapon in the armoury for the battle against algae. The plants quickly adapt to the black out but the algae don't fair so well and it causes them stress - and so weakens them. They fail to flourish.

 

[ceg4048]

Which is a totally false premise...

Cheers,

 

[Manrock]

Cheers - and thanks for your positive input!