Almost any light will grow. I've even seen a youtube video of a 20000k (blue light) growing. Given almost any light will grow plants in your aquarium, it still is a whole nother variable in itself. There are so many different light options out there now. They all can work, you just got to work around it. Lighting is the major monster aspect in itself. It controls growth. So when people say factors like fertilizers or co2, it just may not be so to them answers, and the difference can be lighting. You see a trend of the t5s and different combinations of bulbs and certain height off the tank. A common setup that works real well and you see wonderful plants of result. Certain light, cause certain algaes? Yes I believe that. All the variables of lighting, some are repeat just different words for it-intensity, par, pur, spectrum, color, lux, kelvin, photoperiod. More more more things to look into. Some to never be learned. So ppl usually invest a lot into light? Why? I for one, want to be able to blast as well as dim, I want super fast growth for the plants that I do have. I don't know why it is, but it seems the t5 crowd does it better than the led crowd. I mean the top notch people. It all started with t8s,t12s with me, and I've seen some wonderful things with using those to grow. I noticed the difference in moss growths using powerglos, 50/50s, coralife 6500ks and 10ks..The co2 injection rate has changed as well as fertilization regimes for me, and as well few different lighting types of the leds, t5s, t8s, t12s and power compact. They all grow so well but I may have or may have not witnessed many different algae types in the different lightings I've used. Its funny how one tank gets a certain type of algae bba or bga ie, but never any other type of algae. I think overdosing co2 is overrated, at some point it stops getting used, maybe if increased lighting you can control it that way. Boost in growth doesn't all seem co2 related, I've done a few different injection rates myself. A lot of overdoing it, mainly in fear my plants would die. So I keep injection rates rather high, if I want to add fauna or so, I lower it but see no difference in rate of growth. But then again I've never measured ppm. Back to lighting, when I had my sbreeflights, I had lanky plants. Their site says, shifting the spectrum more towards red gives taller more lanky plants with thinner leaves that are farther apart. That's exactly what happened to my uaupes. They looked like lago grande. I claimed it was the ada soil, but it was actually the lighting. I've never really been a fan of the blue spectrum except for growing mosses. Otherwise, it doesn't please my eyes. Sbreef were the best leds I've tried so far. Seems like their information, they really know their light. Reds come out nice. Some leds I tried were too directional, like the bulbs shot straight down, this made huge algae issues, cause the par was also too high at certain points. Spread was off. I've advised lower the lighting the better, even for high light plants where spread is good, I don't even follow this, I always want more, faster. Not always the best approach, lower, patience I think is better. But you see really awesome stuff being done at higher par.
1. syn tank-battling bga, melting, hair algae
2. frag tank- 2 severums died, bacterial bloom, stabilized at 5, got rid of them to the lfs
3. reason I haven't posted this tank is its always been a failure, old Amazonia (failed), sand (failed), the stems never grew
So I turned this into a aquascape Wood and stems
