I respect your opinion, but I've always just looked at the wattage of a bulb to determine if it's enough for my plants. It's proven to work really well so far. Plus I have three different spectrums of light over different parts of my collection: Warm white, cool white and daylight and I haven't seen a dicernable difference in growth under any of these.[b said:Quote[/b] (technoracer @ Feb. 22 2006,4:22)]wattage is a measure of power consumption, not output. look at the lumens to see how much light they're putting out. the way i understand it, warm white bulbs have more red in the spectrum, and will help induce flowering. cool white bulps have more blue in them, and help growth more. personally, i use cool whites in my 55 gal. terrarium.
look around in the terrarium forum for the article on grow lights from swords. there's a ton of info in it!
peace,
tech...
Maybe so, but is it really that much more light? All I'm saying is that spectrum and lumens has never been of great importance to me and wattage has. I've had great success with my way of thinking and I have happy plants to prove it[b said:Quote[/b] (Outsiders71 @ Feb. 22 2006,10:11)]Your theory is flawed though...
My T8 32 watt bulb will output more light than your T12 42 watt bulb.
Mainly because when you understand it there's no longer anything to think about. Personally I pay my own light bill, now my supplier only sees that I'm running 40watts and bills me for that. If I'm running a "chroma 50" I'm using 40watts and reciving 2,250 lumens with 5000K temp. this is almost perfect for photosynthsis. If I'm using a "Warm white" I'm burning 40watts but I'm getting 3,250 lumens for my buck with isn't a big deal because the colour temp is 3000k. Guess how much the plant uses out of this light.......NOT MUCH even with the higher lumens. So you're burning 40 watts for nothing![b said:Quote[/b] (LLeopardGGecko @ Feb. 23 2006,12:54)]
I'll also go out on a limb and say that only having to pay attention to wattage is MUCH easier than having to keep track of all that other crap.
Why complicate things when it can be so much simpler?
Next year? You should change your bulbs every 3 months or so.[b said:Quote[/b] (LLeopardGGecko @ Feb. 23 2006,4:21)]All very interesting info. Thanks everyone! It's definitely stuff to consider when I get new bulbs next year.
Dang, I think someone's lookin' for a fight[b said:Quote[/b] (Outsiders71 @ Feb. 23 2006,1:35)]Next year? You should change your bulbs every 3 months or so.[b said:Quote[/b] (LLeopardGGecko @ Feb. 23 2006,4:21)]All very interesting info. Thanks everyone! It's definitely stuff to consider when I get new bulbs next year.
[b said:Quote[/b] ]Next year? You should change your bulbs every 3 months or so.
Most of my bulbs aren't tubes, so it'll cost me much more to replace them.[b said:Quote[/b] (Outsiders71 @ Feb. 23 2006,10:57)]Bulbs lose their intensity, and color because they burn off the gas that's inside those tubes after awhile. When I changed my bulbs out you wouldn't believe the bulbs before were the same ones.
Price? I think I paid $2-3 for a 2 pack at home depot...
Any tropical/subtropical rosetted Drosera would do well. Utrics will do well also but you need good air circulation for optimal conditions.[b said:Quote[/b] (Helldragon4356 @ Feb. 23 2006,9:27)]One Question Though, I'm only using a 10 gallon aquarium and was wondering what would be absolutely PERFECT for this size aquarium. Also the plants I'm growing are mostly all Drosera but i also do have one Ping and one Utricalaria