[Colorblizzle]

So as I'm looking at plant profiles trying to see what I like and what I can get I notice for lighting they say things like high low any etc. I'm told PAR means a lot more to the health of plants than the old watts per gallon rules. So with this said my tank will have between 30-40 PAR I'm told this is as good as it gets for lighting a tank in regards to PAR. so with the right ferts can I keep any plant? Or do the ones that say "high light" still need lots of watts to grow. Cuz I don't know what I am or am not limited to...

 

[sowNreap]

So as I'm looking at plant profiles trying to see what I like and what I can get I notice for lighting they say things like high low any etc. I'm told PAR means a lot more to the health of plants than the old watts per gallon rules. So with this said my tank will have between 30-40 PAR I'm told this is as good as it gets for lighting a tank in regards to PAR. so with the right ferts can I keep any plant? Or do the ones that say "high light" still need lots of watts to grow. Cuz I don't know what I am or am not limited to...

I don't think there's really a consensus on what constitutes high, medium, low light regarding PAR yet. It's still a learning process. Right now I go by Hoppy's definition which is:
Low light - 15-30 micromols of PAR - CO2 is not needed, but is helpful to the plants
Medium light - 35-50 micromols of PAR - CO2 may be needed to avoid too many nuisance algae problems
High light - more than 50 micromols of PAR - pressurized CO2 is essential to avoid major algae problems

So according to this definition at 30-40 micromols of PAR you will have around low-medium to medium light. Just curious how you know your tank will have 30-40 PAR? What light fixture are you using?

Not sure what you mean by "I'm told this is as good as it gets for lighting a tank in regards to PAR" because you can definitely have higher PAR than 30-40. Maybe that's as much as your light fixture is capable of on your tank???

As to which plants you can grow .. sorry I'm not much help so I'll defer to someone more knowledgeable than myself. I went through the same thing & had same problems. I assumed my light output was low so mostly looked at low light plants but most didn't fit my other needs so did buy a couple medium & 1 high light plant. That was before I found this forum and found how how low my light really was. Actually the high light plant was among my fastest growers but realize now that's because it was reaching for the light. It was spindly looking but did retain some of the red color and looked fine to me. Looks healthier now with a bit more light though it doesn't grow nearly as fast. Using it for ground cover plant. LOL But then I've got a cold water tank so nothing is growing much right now.

I'm now around 30 par and I've got plants that are considered good for low light but haven't grown that well for me. Whereas the medium & high light plants do fairly decent. Not as good as they would with higher light but good enough for my low maintenance tank. So that's why I don't really know what to say. If you find some you really like that you're not sure about, you can post here and people will tell you how it does in their tank, under their lighting & other conditions (such as if they use pressurized CO2). I've found user comments far more helpful than what light requirement the retailer recommends.

 

[Colorblizzle]

I haven't purchased it yet but I'm going to be using the finnex fuge ray 20" it's for a 10g tank. Another user told me that 30-40 is perfect for me because mine is going to be a low-tech build. I under no circumstances am going to use CO2. He told me that that's the output if that particular fixture. I emailed finnex to get it confirmed but am awaiting a reply.

 

[TexasCichlid]

Finnex has very nice PAR vs depth charts for all of their Fugeray and Ray II models readily available. A Fugeray will be medium light in your case. I would consider dosing some Excel to help with plant growth and discourage algae. I think you will be happy with it. As with any light, be wary of too long of a photoperiod. This becomes more critical the more light you run, especially when you are not adding any CO2.

 

[Colorblizzle]

In my tank it will give me 43 at the center and 25 at the edges. Just looked at the chart. Also I am going to be fertilizing using a trace element mix potassium nitrate mono potassium phosphate and something that ends in sulfate I forget. It's more or less Epsom salts

 

[somewhatshocked]

Honestly, on a 10gal, I think you should consider raising the fixture a bit above the tank or 'dimming' things a bit with lots of floating plants or by using a couple layers of fiberglass window screen placed beneath the light fixture.

 

[Colorblizzle]

Well I live in an apartment so handgun it is out of the question. But I am thinking about using frogbit. Why do you think I need less light?

 

[plantbrain]

More light= more CO2= more trouble(for most).

 

[Colorblizzle]

I understand that. That's why I'm sticking with this fixture. I wanna stay at 40 or below in the PAR scale

 

[sowNreap]

Regarding which plants to choose, besides just basing it on a retailers light requirement, you can also use TPT's Plant Profiles page to help you (if you haven't already): http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/myPlants.php .. not every plant is listed and some that are have old reviews based on old watts/gallon rules but they can still be helpful. You can also use the Search feature here to find whether others have discussed the plant(s) you might want to know more about.

And I'm not sure if this might confuse you more or be helpful, but I used a several different retailer sites to see if they agreed on the light requirement. When they didn't I Googled it trying to find more info (specifically user comments), but that's where the forum comes in handy since a lot of the time the results returned on the first page are usually from here.

 

[Colorblizzle]

I think I'm just gonna go to my LFS and see what they have when the time comes. Buy some fast growing stem plants to get the ball rolling then after awhile experiment with other different plants that catch my eye