Planted Aquarium: Bulbs

[BrendanNSANZ]

I currently use T5HO Arcadia bulbs from the LFS but obviously these are pretty expensive.

1. Are there cheaper alternatives to achieve the same result or is it simply a case of you get what you pay for, if there are cheaper alternatives, what are the brands and whom stocks them?

2. What are the best shops in NZ and overseas for buying bulbs?

Thank you for your time.

[Joe]

Overseas a lot of people seem to use the Giesemann Midday and the Giesemann Aquaflora bulbs and apparently they are brilliant (no wonder - Giesemann is one of the best aquarium lighting companies). The Dennerle Trocal Color Plus looks really good too in terms of spectral output.

Also I have heard a lot about the Aqua Medic Planta bulbs, but I have read that they have a shorter life span than a lot of bulbs so personally if I was ever going to order T5HO bulbs from overseas I wouldn't bother with them. Their spectral output is pretty much identical to the Dennerle bulb. The Planta bulbs are used together with Aqua Medic 10,000K bulbs.

JBL bulbs look pretty good as well.

Here Arcadia is pretty much the only option for good quality bulbs, and even then their bulbs don't really have the best spectral output. The blue is OK, but there is a large peak in the orange spectrum (just after 600nm) and the 640-680nm peak is very small. The plants need 640nm-680nm the most out of the red side of the spectrum.

From "Lighting Spectrum and Photosythesis on Aquatic Plant Central:

For green plants the lighting peaks that are most important:

Chlorophyll-a: 430nm/662nm

Chlorophyll-b: 453nm/642nm

Carotenoids: 449nm/475nm

Red pigmented plants use more light in the blue area of the spectrum.

Your questions:

1. Sylvania GroLux bulbs are quite cheap but I don't think that they come in T5HO in NZ. They have a really good spectral output but terrible colour rendering so they are very pink/purple.

2. Overseas Aquaristikshop.com looks quite good.

In NZ when buying bulbs and other stuff, buy from a specialist aquatic retailer if possible because the prices are usually much better than petshops.

[myfishybuisness]

That's a long answer joe ok here my short answer I came to when looking at the same problem I got 865 t5ho from lighting direct cheap as, my tank is growing really well :thup:

[Joe]

Yeah 865's are quite good. I use a T8 one in conjunction with a Hagen AquaGlo tube and I get pretty good growth and colour.

However I don't like the colour of them on their own. IMO using them with a plant bulb or two really impoves the colours of the fish and plants when you are viewing the tank.

[BrendanNSANZ]

Joe, thank you very much for the information.

I wasn't expecting such a thorough response.

Much appreciated.