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Warm White Florescent?
- Thread starter Helldragon4356
- Start date
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...
look around in the terrarium forum for the article on grow lights from swords. there's a ton of info in it!
peace,
tech...
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:
Helldragon: 15 watts is definitely not enough for most CPs. If you can get 60-80 watts of flourescent light over your plants you'll be in great shape. Warm white, daylight, soft white, and cool white are all acceptable.
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:
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?
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
Paying attention to wattage is easy and usually works just fine when comparing bulbs of the same "family". Most cheap bulbs you buy are going to be in that family, so it's not a big deal, but it's still a fact that lumens are a better gauge of light output.
I have a 54W T5 HO bulb over a fishtank that puts out more light (around 5500 lumens) than the cheapo 80W shoplight I was using for plants (around 4000 lumens). That's about 100 lumens per watt rather than 50 per watt. So in this case it really is a lot more light... twice as much.
But, yeah, they don't really sell bulbs like that for $5 at Walmart.
As far as color temperatures... I may not have the best understanding of it, but our plants photosynthesize mostly from the blue and red wavelengths of the spectrum. You can have one light that's putting a lot of strength into outputting the red and blue, and it can be more beneficial to a plant than a visibily brighter light that's strength is more in the other wavelengths of the spectrum. So, as long as a light isn't really skimping on the blue and the red it'll work, but if your light is putting a lot of strength into the other colors (like a warm yellow light) that's power being wasted... which is very important to us bill-payers this winter.
I have a 54W T5 HO bulb over a fishtank that puts out more light (around 5500 lumens) than the cheapo 80W shoplight I was using for plants (around 4000 lumens). That's about 100 lumens per watt rather than 50 per watt. So in this case it really is a lot more light... twice as much.
As far as color temperatures... I may not have the best understanding of it, but our plants photosynthesize mostly from the blue and red wavelengths of the spectrum. You can have one light that's putting a lot of strength into outputting the red and blue, and it can be more beneficial to a plant than a visibily brighter light that's strength is more in the other wavelengths of the spectrum. So, as long as a light isn't really skimping on the blue and the red it'll work, but if your light is putting a lot of strength into the other colors (like a warm yellow light) that's power being wasted... which is very important to us bill-payers this winter.
As long as you are comparing apples to apples then use whatever measurement you like but one should think about all of them really to make the best decision. It is true that the plants will see the light differently than us. There are ways of measuring such things but most of the time you won't see these kinds of ratings PAR Value (photosynthetic active radiation) measures the amount of energy produced that plants can utilize for photosynthesis. Spectral graph is easier to find and gives a reasonable good way to compare bulbs output. Indeed a 1000w 10000 lumen bulb with 99% yellow light would be totally useless for plant growth but would be blinding to you and me.
Wattage simply states how much energy is used up. Lumens tells you how much light is produced. A 40w fluorescent tube can vary quite a bit in lumen output and color range. SO one should try and get the best use for their $. Generally speaking if you are using the light as the primary grow source then lean towards coolwhite or daylight. They produce more blue than softwhite and warmwhite. Blue is more important for overall photosynthesis and plant growth. Although color temperature is not perfect it is by far the easiest information to find that will at least give you some idea what kind of light the bulb will produce. The higher the kelvin rating (color temperature) the more blue it is.
Aside from this, intensity is extreamly important also. Without enough light it doesn't matter if it is the best bulb or not! How do you know if it is enough though? Trial, experiment, talk to others, with regular fluorescent tubes 2-4' size it is almost impossible to have too much. In many cases it is actually difficult to get enough for some full sun loving plants. The bulbs are big and bulky for the amount of light they output, and they need to be close to the plants. Also remember to change the bulbs regularly. Stinks to have to toss new ones in when the old ones are far from dead but they really do lose a significant amount of lumen output over time.
Tony
Wattage simply states how much energy is used up. Lumens tells you how much light is produced. A 40w fluorescent tube can vary quite a bit in lumen output and color range. SO one should try and get the best use for their $. Generally speaking if you are using the light as the primary grow source then lean towards coolwhite or daylight. They produce more blue than softwhite and warmwhite. Blue is more important for overall photosynthesis and plant growth. Although color temperature is not perfect it is by far the easiest information to find that will at least give you some idea what kind of light the bulb will produce. The higher the kelvin rating (color temperature) the more blue it is.
Aside from this, intensity is extreamly important also. Without enough light it doesn't matter if it is the best bulb or not! How do you know if it is enough though? Trial, experiment, talk to others, with regular fluorescent tubes 2-4' size it is almost impossible to have too much. In many cases it is actually difficult to get enough for some full sun loving plants. The bulbs are big and bulky for the amount of light they output, and they need to be close to the plants. Also remember to change the bulbs regularly. Stinks to have to toss new ones in when the old ones are far from dead but they really do lose a significant amount of lumen output over time.
Tony
Hey everyone thx for all of the imput!! Now i know exactly what to look for when I go get my new bulb.
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
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
[b said:
I change my cool white fluorescents once per year and my plants are doing very well.
Would they do better if the bulbs were changed every three months?....perhaps. The plants would probably do even better if the bulbs were changed every month. But how much better versus the increase in cost? I think one should consider the cost-to-benefit ratio when deciding how often bulbs are replaced, especially when operating on a limited budget.
Any tropical/subtropical rosetted Drosera would do well. Utrics will do well also but you need good air circulation for optimal conditions.[b said:
I have a 10gal. that I have kept as a nursery in the past, and the way I have it set up is with 2 48" shop light fixtures. They overhang on both sides of the aquarium so I place germination trays on both sides of the lights. That's if you have room though
