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Lighting

Hi all.
I am now planning to put my nepenthes highland tank (130,50,60) in my basement. It was far to hot in the old room. I am a total newbie to artificial plant lighting.The plants their pots wil be at 20 cm's of hight. So that leaves the pot surface at about a 40 cm from the light(s).So i have read both sticky's about plant lighting but i am still quite confused about the whole issue. Because the tank is in the basement it won't get any sunlight at all.So now i was wondering ; should i use metal halide lamps or fluorocompact tubes? Isn't a metal halide also quite expensive to run?Wel any lighting info is greatly apprecieted.
regards Sean
 
the florescents will work fine.......my Neps are closer to 80cm from some 122cm 32 watt T8 shop lights
 
t8 shop lights are good but i think that cfl (Compact Flourescent Lights) are better on electric in cost wise :D
 
takes a lot of CFL's to cover the 6 square feet im covering with 6 T8 bulbs between 3 fixtures(would be comfortable covering 8 square feet with the same light but my racks arent built for that).....besides i can rig up the lighting for 6 square feet in about 5 minutes.......would take me significantly longer to build the fixtures needed to light the same area with CFL's
 
welll ..... it depends on what the bulb is have you not seen a 250w cfl bulb ? it is so bright i could easily brighten a room with it and its that bright if you look at it for too long you will be blind ;) blue with the fitting for the cfl is the same as a metal halide/hps so if he ever wants to change to these but i wouldent advise using a hps/metal halide bulb as they create alot of heat if the room has ventilation then you could i suppose :) but i mean alot of vent im not knocking the t8s i would either use as stated a t8 or a cfl although i will put it across that a cfl is cheaper to run and is about creating more light than heat :D but at the end of the day either of these will do :D
 
i would have a hard time incorporating such a bulb into my current setup.....i would need different shelves...or more realistically something like a table to put the plants on and mount the bulb from the ceiling above the plants....the shop lights are only about 10cm tall and 15 cm wide and 122 cm long.....much easier to light half a square meter of plants and keep the plants relatively close to the lights with the longer T8's than the big CFL's......the bigger CFL's need to be almost treated like the smaller metal halides.......
 
CFLs have more efficient tubes, but I've been told by several sources that overall they give less light relative to the energy costs because of the high rate of restrike due to the twisting of tubes.
sanguinea - avoid metal halide lights. They're way too expensive and also run hot, which can be a hazard to your plants or your home. Try ordinary fluorescent tubes. Your tank is large enough that compact fluorescents will not be an efficient choice.
~Joe
 
i 2nd the motion to stick with tubes, granted I use both CFL's and T8 tubes.

if your going to use tubes, its makes more sense to by the 4' tubes, but if you have a smaller set up that wouldnt be able to take full advantage of the 4' tubes, or fit them... its probably a better idea to go with CFL's,

for your money the tubes are way better, they cover a ton of space.

but the cfl's can be a great supplement, just make sure you dont waste your money on those " shop clip light " fixtures for cfl's, its a HUGE waste of money there are more inventive and cost efficient ways of dealing with CFL's.

i have a 20 gallon tank for my HL's at the moment that i light with cfl's, i currently have 12 cfl's over it, and i only have to use 2 plug ins to handle it,

but then an intermediate tank which is much larger that I use 2- dual t8 4' long fixtures for a total of ( 4 tubes ) , and supplement it with 5 larger cfl's that I had accumulated from earlier endeavors...

if I could start all over, i probably wouldnt choose that array of lighting, but it works really well now that i have it.

-C
 
40cm from the top of the pot to the lights? Sounds a bit far if you are using standard T8 tubes. I would also use as many as you can fit over the grow chamber if you go with the T8 tubes.
 
  • #10
oké.Thanks guys. I will certainly take tubes. The only problem here in Belguim is that there are no specifications on the lamps. They only say how many watt's they are. I will take a mix of cool whites and Gro-lux. There are already 2 lamps in the tank 1 36 watt grolux and 1 36 watt cool white. These are both 120 cm.
 
  • #11
You can tell the different tubes apart by their diameter; the T#s are in eighths of an inch. For metric, multiply by 3.175 and you get millimeters. So a T12 bulb is 1.5 inches or 38.1 millimeters thick; a T8 bulb is an inch or 25.4mm; T5 would then be 5/8" or 15.875mm.
~Joe
 
  • #12
So,the light's are now in place. There are two 120cm cool white's and two Gro luxes who are also 120 cm. Al the lamps are 36 watt's. Will this do? The whole terrarium is surrounded by a highly reflective material,except the front.
 
  • #13
The plants are in for already 1 week right now. I just received some new nepenthes .In total i have 144 wats of fluorocompact tubes. Two 36 wat gro- lux plant light's and two normal 36 wat cool - white's. I need to now if it wil work.... I don't see any difference on the nepenthes jet...
But the light's look brighter than before...
 
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