# Does actinic light count?



## booba5 (May 3, 2008)

I've always wondered if actinic lights should be counted when I'm calculating my watts per gallon. Example: I just got done building my canopy for my 90 and it has 6 bulbs, 4 7500K T8s (32w) and 2 actinic t12s (40w). This would be 208w, but 80w is blue. So would I have 1.42 wpg, since 128 watts is normal white lighting? Or would it be 2.31 wpg with the blue lights included?


----------



## PsYcHoTiC_MaDmAn (Dec 26, 2005)

whats this for??

in a marine tank I suppose it would be counted, however actinic offers nothing for plants, and as such couldn't be counted. and would probably fuel nuisance algae.

for just a plain cichlid tank with no plants or low light demanding plants you really dont need more than 1 bulb or so


----------



## booba5 (May 3, 2008)

it's a 90 gallon long and one 48 inch bulb doesn't cover the whole thing, so i have 2 with them overlapping in the middle, and it's peacock\hap tank


----------



## PsYcHoTiC_MaDmAn (Dec 26, 2005)

no plants??

if so then WPG means nothing.

90g is 48" long, same as my 40g. which a single 36" bulb lit up extremely well.

there is no need for all this extra light. 1-2 bulbs would illuminate it perfectly well. and you dont need to overlaps them, as despite it not covering end to end, the light spreads and will illuminate the entire tank


----------



## booba5 (May 3, 2008)

it's a 72" long 90, not a 48 inch, and i am trying to grow algae with a little italian val, but nothing major


----------



## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

Vallisneria is not known as a low-light plant.


----------



## booba5 (May 3, 2008)

k well i had it in my 75 with 3 7500ks and 1 actinic and it was fine, i just recently upgraded and got this tank and built the canopy for it. would this not be enough light?


----------



## JWerner2 (Jul 7, 2008)

What was the watts? You measure the amount needed by the wattage not by the Kelvins.

Seeing on how you had such high Kelvins is probably why they did so well with that tank. The higher the Kelvins the less effective the output is especially for plants since they require the lower range of reds and yellows ( the lower the Kelvins the brighter the light is that gets put out ) and that will end up working out beter for low light plants like Val's one would assume.


----------



## Guest (Aug 25, 2008)

That's plenty of lights for your 90G even if you are growing medium light plants. I had a 196W of CF on my 90G, of which half was blue actinic. I had no problem growing vals, swords, and a few other plants.


----------



## SLIGHTLY STOOPID (Dec 23, 2004)

How many feet of bulbs are you running? It really is better to just bite the bullet and put a decent light set-up in from the start. I would use 4 36" t5s. 2 in the 6500k to 8000k range, and 2 20,000k bulbs.


----------



## booba5 (May 3, 2008)

I've got 4 48" 7500k t8s(32watts) and 2 48" t12s of Actinic (40watts) so in terms of "white light" i have 128 watts, if you include the actinic, then I have 208 watts, with 6 bulbs total


----------



## SLIGHTLY STOOPID (Dec 23, 2004)

You are running 24 feet on a six foot tank. That's like four rows of 72" bulbs. So you basically have three across but overlapping which should be plenty for algae and a few plants.


----------

