# Watts for 65 gallon tank.



## john jay (Oct 8, 2013)

Hi i have a 65 gallon tall tank 36"Lx18"Wx24"H. how many watts do i need to grow mid light plants? No C02, using fertilizer and sand as substrate.

Thank you


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## TorontoPlantMan (Aug 16, 2013)

john jay said:


> Hi i have a 65 gallon tall tank 36"Lx18"Wx24"H. how many watts do i need to grow mid light plants? No C02, using fertilizer and sand as substrate.
> 
> Thank you


Watts is the wrong way of going about measuring your light, you want to measure the PAR. Here is an example of why... I have a 30" Coralife dual T5HO with two 31 watt bulbs each for a total for 62 watts, and I also have a Marineland Aquatic Plant LED 24-36" light that only consumes 27 watts. When another member of this forum came to my place & measured the PAR in my tank, with the Coralife at roughly 16-18" (accounting for substrate height) the PAR reading was a very low 20!!! I was literally shocked at how terrible the light was, especially considering how my bulbs were only 2-3 months old if that. When we measured the Marineland LED light it literally blew us away, the PAR was over 100 even at the bottom of the tank and as we raised the sensor the PAR hit spots of 160 +/-.

I could be off a bit on the numbers but from what I can remember the readings usually look like this:

Low light - 0-30 PAR
Med light- 40-70 PAR
High light- 80+

Anything that falls in between like 35 would be Low/Med light, so on and so forth.

Anyway, I think you should figure out if you want to go T8, T5, LED, CFL's, etc and then it'll be easier to figure out.


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## ebetcruz (Dec 30, 2012)

I have the same tank and I'm using the Finnex Fugeray Planted (running 9 hrs a day) and my rotala rotundifolia, hygrophila polysperma, dwarf sags, dwarf red lotus, anubias and crypts are all doing great.


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## HOWsMom (Jan 3, 2012)

How does one figure out the PAR ?

Sent from my SGH-I317M using Tapatalk


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## TorontoPlantMan (Aug 16, 2013)

HOWsMom said:


> How does one figure out the PAR ?
> 
> Sent from my SGH-I317M using Tapatalk


A PAR meter, or some of the newer lights list this on the side. I know on TPT there is a thread that someone did with the PAR of 10+ different light fixtures from average shop t5's and t8's to branded ones like coralife, aquatic life, etc. Google is your best friend.


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## colio (Dec 8, 2012)

Long story short, I think if you have a good fixture with good reflectors you can get low/med at 2 bulbs, and 4 bulbs is high or very high, with a good fixture (e.g. aquatic life).

Coralife fixtures are really quite bad.

Here is the very good planted tnk thread by Hoppy:

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=184368


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## aniroc (Aug 23, 2012)

Thanks for sharing, Colio. Very good read, indeed


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