Effective Wattage...

[VA2GXB]

Hi All,

I recently came by a 30gal Hagen aquarium (free!) and am going to build a custom hood for it, as I only nabbed the tank itself and two filters.

I have several LED bulbs (450lm & 800lm), with white LEDS - which are basically phosphored blue dies...so there's quite a lot of 400-450nm radiation, and the rest is largely wide-spectrum, up into the late 600nm range.

Now, as a lighting engineer, we go by lumens. 'Effective watts' we know too. But the W/gallon specific to planted tanks.... We don't quite do that.

Those bulbs are 40W (450lm) and 60W (800lm) equivalents...optically, the total flux would be equivalent to 120W with three 40Ws, or two 60Ws...

Someone correct me from a planted tank point-of-view though?

And hello, this is my first post . Be nice

L

[Hoppy]

Welcome to the Planted Tank forum! Don't concern yourself with "watts per gallon", because that is a meaningless parameter. Instead, think type of lighting, and tank dimensions, especially the height of the tank. See http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/sh...d.php?t=105774 for more information.

[VA2GXB]

Aha! Reading that brought back some stuff from the annals of my mind :

What we're doing is growing plants. They work in uMole - photonic energy! Forgotten that!

So, my tank measures 36"Lx12"Wx15"D. (2x800lm + 1x450lm + 500lm)/(.27m^2), about 9,250lux - appx 185uMole/m2/sec. Should be good! Allow for reflector loss etc, still in a good ballpark!