The Importance of Proper Lighting for Your Live Plants (florescent or incandescent?)
There are essentially two types of aquarium lighting available – fluorescent and incandescent. While each type of lighting has its own advantages and disadvantages, experts over the years have come to favor fluorescent lighting. The reason is that although incandescent lights are cheaper, they also give off a large amount of heat.
Unless you carefully regulate the time that they are on, these lamps will heat up your fish tank quickly, hurting your efforts to control the temperature of your tank. Halogen lamps, which are one kind of incandescent lamps, tend to last longer but they also produce a great amount of heat.
In general, fluorescent lighting is more efficient and creates little heat. Also, such lights no longer give off the greenish glow found in many doctors’ offices. The lights now have more range, thanks to warm white and cool white bulbs.
You want the peak intensity of your lighting to occur at the same time each day. A great way to accomplish this is through the use of timers, which your local pet shop can help you find.
When using a fluorescent light for your plants, it’s a good idea to go with around 15 watts for a 10 gallon tank (at 10 hours, per day). Fifteen gallon tanks should run 20 watts at 10 hours/day, while 20 gallon tanks should run for 12 hours at the same wattage.