VHO lighting questions

You are using 220 watts of electricity to do a job that 54 watts does very well. Over a few months this will add up in electricity costs - about an additional 250 x 166 watt hours, or about 40 KWatt Hours per month. And, those lights will heat the water much more than a T5HO light will, which could be a Summer problem.

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So Hoppy, the quick answer is that I cantake out one set of ice caps. Can these ice caps take a t5 bulb? what size kelvin do you recommend?

229oz said:

So Hoppy, the quick answer is that I cantake out one set of ice caps. Can these ice caps take a t5 bulb? what size kelvin do you recommend?

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The second question: Color temperature is mostly a matter of making the tank look like you want it to look. As long as you have sufficient PAR the plants will grow.

The first question: I don't know the answer.

229oz said:

So Hoppy, the quick answer is that I cantake out one set of ice caps. Can these ice caps take a t5 bulb? what size kelvin do you recommend?

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I don't think a T12 ballast will fire a T5 bulb. There may be some exceptions with specialty type ballasts. And if any of them would it would be something like the icecap. But usually no (and I've never heard of it being done).

It should fire a T8 though. And you might have more bulb options in T8 than T12.

I've never seen a 10K T12 bulb though. I'm assuming these are 4' bulbs.

An IceCap 660 will run 16 feet of fluorescent bulbs.
Just don't mix types. e.g. T5 & T8 = No
four T5HO = yes.
four T8 = yes
four T12 = yes
four T12 VHO = yes.

lighting

OK, so will I be good to go with one T12 10,000k 110 watt bulb over my 55 gal for a heavily planted tank? I also force c02 (2 bps) and dose 3 times a week.
Also what does PAR mean? I did a search and couldn't find a straight answer.

I dont want to change from t12 to t5s for the time being as I still have extra t12 bulbs to go through.

229oz said:

OK, so will I be good to go with one T12 10,000k 110 watt bulb over my 55 gal for a heavily planted tank? I also force c02 (2 bps) and dose 3 times a week.
Also what does PAR mean? I did a search and couldn't find a straight answer.

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PAR = photosynthetically available radiation.

You've probably heard of lumens. That's the measurement of the light that you can see. PAR is the measurement of the light that can be used for photosynthesis.

An Icecap 660 is two ballasts in one, each circuit can run 2 bulbs (so you can run max of 4 bulbs). You can mix bulbs, one type on each circuit. One thing to understand is that the icecap ballast will put the maximum wattage it can through just about any bulb you hook up. As an example, two four foot T5HO should draw 108 watts plus or minus a bit for the ballast and conversion, killawatt says two T5HOs at four feet is drawing 174 watts, so figure its running each 54w bulb at 80ish watts.. Great ballast, and it extends the life of the tubes even running them harder.

can I run one

Can someone confirm that I can get away with one t12 10000k 110 watt bulb for a heavily planted 55 gal tank?

I'd say probably, but it depends on your ballast, Icecap 660 cannot run just one bulb, but the icecap 430 can, so check which ballast you have

Thanks. I think Ill scale back if I can.