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New to plants need some lighting help

First you will have to decide which way you want to go with your tank: low energy or high energy. Both can produce beautiful tanks, but in a different way. My suggestion is to read everything here for a few days http://www.ukaps.org/forum/forums/tutorials.34/, and then make a decision. You will probably have learned a lot then and see your question in an other "light";)
 
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Well I'm still lost! I think I want to go low energy so substrate wise 2.5cm of john innes no3 and 2cm of gravel on top. Lighting is still a mystery to me, partly because I have a shallow tank at 12" which will be reduced further by almost 2" of substrate and an inch or so water line from the top of the tank so I'll have a water depth of 9" to the substrate but of course most plants will be closer to the light as I'd like some taller ones rather than just ones that grow on the substrate. Ideally I want to tank mount the light so based on that would you be able to give me an indication of the lighting I should be looking at?
 
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A DIY T8 should be enough, T5 give a lot of light compared to T8. Or a spotlight. You can see square shallow tanks at http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/toms-bucket-o-mud-cryptpocalyspe.14521/ and http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/...es-licorice-n-allsorts-baby-chocco-fry.25069/ for the two most famous shallow tanks on this forum. There is so many light options it's hard to tell you get this or get that, a TMC tile with a controler can work, T8 or T5 in any form that allows you to change output.lots of options.
 
As you're new to plants, T8's sound like good advice to me.Lower levels of lighting will give you a chance to try things out, problems can occur but a lot more slowly.
Vaguely remember T8's are going to be phased out at some stage in the future, which may be a down side.
I use 2 T8's over my 70L tank, that's 12" or so high
LED's with a controller, so you can reduce the output, i guess could be an option.Seems to be a lot of money considering you wouldn't be using them to their full potential, but would be future proofing.
post #75 on here, shows a chart which is a rough guide to lighting levels at different heights.
 
I'm not sure it's suitable but I have a light unit from when I had a marine tank. It's a 120w dimmable blue and white LED unit. Blue and white are independent so can be dimmed separately or switched off altogether.
 
_simon_ said:
Well I'm still lost! I think I want to go low energy so substrate wise 2.5cm of john innes no3 and 2cm of gravel on top.
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Depending on the fish you might want to avoid JI3 and gravel, my water goes up from 75 TDS to 375 TDS. See if you can get some lime-free organic topsoil and some coarse sand.

As for the light someone else might be able to help more, might be okay depending on how dim it goes and how far off the surface you can rise it. Probably turn the blue off all together and see how low you can go with the white light. 120w sounds a lot of LED power.
 
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