What kind of light for a planted tank

[neon]

I have a 55gal tank with a two bulb T5 light. Right now my bulbs are 12000K and blue actinic. But been think of down grading my bulbs down to 2 6500K for plants. Will this be ok for sword plants? :sun:

[shawnhu]

I wouldn't call switching the high Kelvin bulbs to lower a downgrade. If your 2 bulb T5 have decent reflectors on them, and they are each 4' in length, then you would have medium light. With co2 and good ferts, you can grow a lot of plants.

[scottishbloke]

Having two 6500k bulbs would be much better for growing plants than 10,000k and actinic bulbs, both of which are really meant for use in saltwater tanks (these will still work however, they are just not ideal for freshwater setups). Like the previous poster said, switching to 6500k bulbs is not "downgrading"- they simply put out much more of the wavelengths of light that freshwater plants need than the bulbs you currently have. What size, wattage, and specific type of T5 bulbs is your fixture designed for (NO or HO)? Do you want to do a low-tech, lower light setup, or a high-tech one with high light and co2?

Colin

[neon]

Having two 6500k bulbs would be much better for growing plants than 10,000k and actinic bulbs, both of which are really meant for use in saltwater tanks (these will still work however, they are just not ideal for freshwater setups). Like the previous poster said, switching to 6500k bulbs is not "downgrading"- they simply put out much more of the wavelengths of light that freshwater plants need than the bulbs you currently have. What size, wattage, and specific type of T5 bulbs is your fixture designed for (NO or HO)? Do you want to do a low-tech, lower light setup, or a high-tech one with high light and co2?

Colin

My fixture is designed for HO. My bulbs are odyssea 54W 12000k daylight and actinic. So if high-tech what kind of plants would I be able to grow? If I went low-tech would I have a lot of choice with different plants?