# Will my lighting be too much?



## Landmax (Jun 19, 2008)

Hi,

I'm starting a planted tank again...

I have a 2ft cube with a sump totaling about 60 gal. Probably about 35-40 gals for main tank and the rest goes to the sump. I bought a quad t5 HO light system for it. It will be on timers wired 2x2 and I still have my CO2 system handy. My substrate is flourite sloping 3" to 1.5" back to front and about an inch of sand on top. I want to place carpeting plants (dwarf hair grass and HC Cuba) in the forground and taller plants in back ground (Probably plants with more color other than green).

Question:
Will the 96watts of t5 be over kill? Can I get away with changing other buls with pink or blue to bring out the color of the fish?

Thanks


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## Will (Jul 24, 2008)

IF it's too much light, _and it wont be..._ you can just run one set of two lights for the whole day, and have the other lights come on for several hours during the middle of the day.

HC really needs bright light to stay low and carpet. not enough light and it grows stringy and upwards. DHG has the same tendancy but does okay with much less light than HC.


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## Rmwbrown (Jan 22, 2009)

I love this question. I learned the hard way that T5 HO can cause some serious problems, however, I agree with Will, you should be fine. That said, you should also think about maintaining the following parameters... 

Keep the flow high - the normal suggestion for high light tanks is 10x the volume of the tank every hour.

Keep the Co2 at 30ppm (which could be difficult depending on how your sump is set up)

Dose EI.

When i switched over to T5 HO i figured i would makes these changes as i moved along, however, it really just caused a lot of nuisance algae that could have been prevented had i had my flow right and the bulk nutrients (opposed to seachem) from the start.
If it is a problem, as Will suggests, you can run a midday blast or raise the light up a bit higher.


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