It's been a while since I posted but I've been busy going off the deep end. Last time I was here I was hunting specific lights and not finding what I wanted in a price that I could swallow. Specifically I wanted a grow light for 12" depth that ideally can be dimmable without costing $$$...

Hello All, I am wondering what color temperatures are used to mimic sunrise and sunset. All I have been able to find is that sunrise tends to be a little lower, maybe 5500K? While full sunlight is around 6700K. Anyone have any experience manually inputting color varying color temps...

I need a new pl-s lamp for my nano armature. The original Dennerle 11 watt tropical day lamp is very expensive but i found a much cheaper Philips branded pl-s light. The dennerle is 6000k The Philips is 4000k I know kelvin does not have say much about the ability to grow plants so i've...

Hello all, I have a few questions about lighting. Currently, I have 2 34W 6500K spiral CFL bulbs on my 10G tank. they are working fine, but I'm wondering what is the best as far as spectrum goes. Are the 10,000K bulbs better for growing? Also, what does full spectrum mean? Does it cover a...

Looking to build LED fixture equivalent to 4x 18W CFL. Going over sump so looks don't matter. Need maximum feasible efficiency because of high energy costs (for comparison purposes use $0.36/kWh). Questions: -Wavelength - look for 660nm and 440nm reds and blues? -Thinking 16x 3W LEDs - is...

Hi I got myself a 2ft LED FLUVAL and the sales guy said that LED lighting don't lose their spectrum results and degrade unlike T5 light tubes. Just wondering whether what he said is correct. When I use T5 lighting, I tend to replace the tubes every year then plants will grow, anyone been using...

Hello TPT'rs, I wanted to start a conversation about bulb spectrums. Here's a few things I've learned about lighting, in hopes that it might make things easier on someone starting out. Trying to figure out how much light I needed was the first roadblock I came to. Luckily I found this...

So I just installed a new T-5 HO 2x24 watts, and I have another T-5 at 2x14 watts. It puts my 20 gallon tank at almost 4 watts per gallon. The question I have is should all my bulbs be 6500 k or should I install one or two 10000 k bulbs? I'm am looking for maximum plant growth. Thanks in...

I have a hard time looking for bulbs in the hardware store (because that's usually what's most affordable in terms of DIY) when nothing is labelled in (K) and there is no red/blue spectrum indicator or wavelength measurement. Not only that, but when I start asking question about color...