Enough Lighting?

I need a little advise on my light levels.

Tank is a Juwel 260L Vision With Standard Lighting unit but tubes changed to front tube jbl natur t5 1047mm 9000k / rear jbl tropic t5 1047mm 4000k.

I have today added a 24W to 39W t5 single tube ballast and a 39W Giesemann PowerChrome Aquaflora tube just behind the Juwel light unit.

All tubes have clean jbl metal reflectors fitted.

Total Watts is therefore 147W over 260L of water.

I am running lights for 12hrs per day.

I am injecting pressurised Co2 through a ph controller to approx 30mg/l reading obtained via 2 jbl drop checkers.

Daily Ferropol 24 and 10ml easycarbo (very small amount of BBA appeared while getting Co2 levels up).

Weekly 15ml Profito.

Substrate is Aquabasis with Manado on top.

Are my lights up to "reasonable / good" plant growth?

Is there anything missing in the setup?

I know nothing about plants I just pick up whatever looks nice / cheap in LFS.

Thanks in advance,
Pat.

Someone Here knows about lighting, don't keep me in the dark

Sorry but have to ask, is that "hygrophila polysperma rosanervig" AKA Sunset hygrophila second from the left at the back? I just ask to see how it does in your tank, I have it and it is growing very badly while all other plants in my setup are thriving!

As a comparison although I know nothing about light, I have 60 watts of light in a 180 litre and everything (except the Sunset hygrophila) is thriving. I plan on changing to LEDs soon though as I have in all my other smaller tanks a couple of weeks ago. Sorry for going a little off topic!

I simply wouldn't have a clue what it is, but if you hold on I should be able to find the little tags that came with them.

Yes Hygrophila Polysperma is the plant, tops turned brown within a couple of days of planting but seem to be recovering with the Co2 etc. Not sure if a success yet!

Cool, Mine didn't turn brown but lost leaves, kept uprooting and the stems kept breaking (not sure if the fish took a liking to it or if it was the plant itself) so I have had to keep replanting them, Actually seem to have taken off a bit better in the last week or so but are well behind all other plants I planted at the same time, fingers crossed! Best of luck with the plants.

To answer the question on your lighting levels, you have enough light for all but the most demanding plants.
The general rule of thumb for light levels is approx. 2 watts per gallon (WPG) which is approximately 4 litres (3.78541 litres to be exact). This is US gallons before anyone jumps in and corrects the conversion rate
2 WPG equates to a little over 0.5W per litre (0.528 WPL)
You have 147W over a 260l tank, which equates to 2.14WPG or 0.565WPL.
The watts per gallon or litre do not factor in water colour, tank depth, light spectrum etc. However given your tank, it should be ok for all but the most demanding plants as I said. You may have problems getting plants like Cuba forming a good carpet effect but that’s about it. For the plants you have, with co2 and sufficient nutrients, they will thrive.
Probably more important with lights in the planted tank is the actual light spectrum from your tubes. Most manufacturers of the tubes will list a spectrum in the form of a graph showing the colour spectrum intensity over the entire range for the tube. You ideally want a tube that produces more intensity in the red and blue ranges for plants.
If the tubes produce more in the green part of the spectrum, your plants will look great but not really benefit as such. This is due to the fact that plants reflect green light, hence they appear green to us. So light in the green part of the spectrum is reflected and no use to help the plant photosynthesise. You mentioned that some of your tubes are in the 9000k colour temp range, I would not go any higher than that and ideally around the 4500 to 6500k colour temp range is more suited to plants.


Here is an a link to an excellent article on the subject of colour temp of aquarium lighting from Manius112 - www.irishfishkeepers.com/index.php/forum...its-and-bulbs#113645

Cheers,

Bill.