Alright, so I know this is really vague, but I'm trying to get a better idea of how my tank is set up and just looking for opinions. I have 2 vertically placed CFL over my 10 gallon, both are about 13 inches above substrate. One is a 13watt the other is 23 watt, both 6500k. I recently added DIY co2 and everything in the tank including the dwarf hairgrass is pearling. My tank looks like a snow globe. Would this be an indication that I have achieved "high light". Outside of the hairgrass the highest light plant i have is water sprite, otherwise it's just crypts, amazon sword, and a couple kinds of anubias so I really can't tell. Trying to get a better idea because this set up has only been like this for about 2 days and I want to know if I need to add more light or not so I can work on getting a carpet. I know my best bet would be getting my hands on a PAR meter and checking the output in the tank, but I haven't been able to find anyone that has one and there's no clubs/LFS within 2 hours of me. So based off of what little cryptic information I have given you, what's your take on it? And is there other ways besides going off PAR or watts per gallon that I could use to figure out if I have high light or not?
I might leave lighting as is (no more than 6 hour's total) and train my effort's on providing the necessary nutrient's (Macro/micro nutrient's).
Without them ,all the lighting you could throw at the tank will be a detriment to your effort.
More light means more CO2 and nutrient's will be needed t match the light energy being beamed down upon the leaves.
Even with CO2 injection,plant's can perform very nicely with less light than one might imagine.
you can measure it in two ways, a electronic device to measure PAR or our eyes.
If you don't have the budget for PARometer that's ok because I think it might be overkill. Our eyes are great to tell if its high light or low light. If your fish tank is sitting in a room and the light is bright enough to light the room, it is high light. if it looks like a dim night light in the corner of a cozy reading room, it is low light. Basically use your eye and compare it to the bright things in life like a lamp.
I have a 10g with 2 horizontal 10-watt cfl bulbs in the hood with a guard and no reflector. I would say it gives me medium-low light. With two vertical 13-watt bulbs, you would be in medium-high territory. With a 13 and 23 watt, I would say you are definitely in high light. Cfls have way more par vertically, but less spread.
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