Little Confused on Lighting

[MLBfan]

AS some of you already know, I have a 29 gallon tank with firemouths. I want to get a good light for it so I can plants in with some nice looking, low maintenance plants, but I am a little confused on what all the different light numbers mean. I hear 6700k and 10000k and I don't quite understand the differences and advantages of the various kinds. Also, what does that do for wattage?

Basically, is there an article or can someone please break down the aspects of lighting? Either that or just recommend a light for my tank (specific brand, not just t5HO)? I'm looking for a light for under $100.

[Dave66]

OK, 6700K (K standing for Kelvin) is the color temperature of sunlight in the first several feet of water. It's also ideal for photosynthetic aquatic plants.

10,000 K is too blue-white for optimal photosynthesis of aquatic plants, and can easily result in algae getting the upper hand.

So if you want easy plants, your best bet is to aim for 2 watts per gallon of 6700K light. That'll enable you (if you have a good fine grain iron rich planted tank substrate) you can keep the vast majority of sword plant species, the vallinsnerias, the mosses, the ferns the anubis etc. etc. Only thing you really can't keep are stem plants, since they need two or three times that much light.

If you look up threads by me, you'll see my list of plants you can keep in what lighting level.

Dave

[MLBfan]

THanks Dave,

One more question, would this be a good substrate: CaribSea Seaflor Special Grade Reef Sand 15 lb for growing plants?

[Dave66]

Actually that is for marine tanks, that substrate. It would harden your tank water, and every time you do a partial change your hardness would go up and down.

If you look for threads by me, you'll see how I do planted tank substrates, and why I do them that way. If you have questions about it, just ask.

Dave

[MLBfan]

Ok, now I fear I may have a bit of a fiasco on my hands.


So, the substrate is a marine substrate I know, but it says it is also for African cichlids (the tank was originally going to be a Tanganyika setup, but I changed my mind), so with that I got my water tested originally at 7.8 pH and decided that it would be fine given that the fish are not from the wild and the tank are hardy, I drip acclimated these guys: Params went:
pH-7.8 GH-11 KH-6 on 04-05-2012
pH -7.4 (suspect that addition of a little driftwood did this) GH-6 KH-4 on 04-09-2012
pH- 7.8 GH- 11 KH- 6 on 04-12-2012 (A fish died a day after that)
ph- 8.2 GH 13 KH 7 on 4-13-2012
pH -8.0 GH-18 KH-9 on 04-16-2012 (Fish died on that day)

Some human error while testing could have messed up the results a tiny bit, but now I'm wondering if the substrate did this, I haven't done any water changes yet because the params remained good and I didn't want to upset them because they were already super freaked out. However I did add some water in to fill it to the water line. Anyway, should I change substrates? If so, how do I do that and keep my fish alive and well?