Kelvin choice for CRS and plants

[WiLPWR]

Hi All

Hope you are all well, just wanted to pick everyone's brain for advice.
-I have a AquaOne AR-980 215Litre/55Gallon tank aim to be planted with focus on CRS (and potentially a few fish)
-Setup on the 13-Oct-2012 with 3 bags of ADA Amazonia New
-Has a medium/large piece of driftwood with Anubias, some Blue Stricta (and a violet version) and allot of Micro Brazilian Sword
-Water testing on 12-Nov-2012 shows it is still in the Ammonia part of the cycle despite it being 4 weeks (think its the ADA) so added a DIY C02 setup through a powerhead to try and help out the plants and cycle

Question is the hood contains 3 x T8 90cm tubes.

I had one blow out so have replaced it with a 30W AquaOne sunlight tube rated at 10000K.
In there already seems to by a red one I'm assuming 15000K and another white one rated at 6500K.

It seems that even if I replace them all to 30W tubes I will still be under the ideal Watts per gallon 09W/55G. But the main thing is I've heard that plants and CRS only like rough 6500K-10000K, however I wanted to change one of the tubes to a 20000K AquaOne marine blue tube for aesthetics, will this affect the plants and the CRS?

Your help is appreciated.

Cheers
Will

[Darkblade48]

A 20000K bulb is very blue; it will essentially be unusable by plants. It should not affect their growth (nor the CRS), but you are essentially "wasting" a bulb.

I am not sure of the exact dimensions of your 55 gallon aquarium (I am assuming ~21 inches), but even with three T8 bulbs, you will be effectively low light at substrate level. Using one space for a 20000K bulb will essentially make your aquarium only suitable for low light tolerant plants.

[WiLPWR]

Thanks for the advice, I thought as much.
Will ramp up the other 2 to 10000K as well for now and look into LED lighting next.

Cheers!

[jbrady33]

you can do with anything from 5000k to 10000, plants will like them. 10000 will be bright, clean white/blue light, but washes out plant colors a bit. 6500k is a popular choice, greens will be richer but the light is a warmer yellowish color.