Lighting for a 75g planted tank

[K Anderson]

Hi, I am new to this forum and to Discus. I am working on setting up a new 75 gallon mildly planted tank for 5 or 6 discus as soon as I build a stand for it. My question is on lighting. I found a great deal on a Coralife Aqualite 48" t5 dual lamp fixture, 2 28 watt lamps - one Colormax and one 6,700K daylight. I bought 2 of them. Will this be way too much light for this tank? I put one on my current 55 gallon tank to get an idea what it would look like and it looked great, a little brighter than the 2 GE 18" 15w plant bulbs in use on it now. What do you thank? Thank you for any advice you may have, I have already learned a lot just lurking around for the last couple of weeks.

[prolude006]

so that is a total of 56 watts then for one fixture? little less than 1 watt per gallon. thats pretty low light and the discus would love it, the plants would have to be really low light species for that.
two fixtures would give you 112 watts or 1.49 watts per gallon so that is closer to what you need, I would say its fine for some low light tolerant plants that grow slow.
anubias, and crypts would be good.

David

ps I have 4x65w power compact over my 75 and its never bothered the discus, my plants grow well and I dont use any additives. Ill post a picture in a bit with the lights on at 2x65w and 4x65w to see the difference. The tank is part bb, part planted in containers due to its temporary placement.

[waters10]

If you have any intention on transforming the tank to high tech, I'd suggest the Catalina 3x54w T5HO. You can start with one bulb, move to 2 and use 3 later on, if you go high tech. I think this fixture is a great value for what you pay. I have one and spent about 1 year using one bulb. Now I'm using two and I'm planning to use all 3 in the future.

But if you're pretty sure you won't ever need 2 or 3 bulbs, better to get a simpler fixture.

[whiskeyd]

+1 on the Catalina 3x54w. I sold my Coralife CF 4x65w to get a Nova extreme 2x54w on my 55G. The T5HOs run so much cooler and put out more light.

[RodneyL001]

Get the biggest fixture your money can buy, even if you only use one light. It is better to have more than enough and don't need it, than to need it and not have it.

[Fishandturtlejunkie]

Once you start growing some low light plants you will want to upgrade anyway so buying the best fixture you can within your budget is sound advice. I like the T-5 fixtures for bang for buck. I would recommend going slow with the amount of light and plant types you introduce as the more light you have the better the chance of algae growth. Anubias, various ferns, mosses and some crypts should fair well under 1.5 WPG.