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clubbby

Are these a good pair of T5HO lights?

clubbby
12 years ago

I have just taken down a freshwater aquarium that had a dual t5 florescent fixture on it. I've decided to recycle this and I built a frame to hang the light from with a chain to raise and lower the light.

I did a little bit of reading beforehand and what I read was that it's best to have light in the ~460nm range for vegetation and ~680nm for flowering. I went first to home depot but their t5 selection was less than impressive, I then went to my local fish store and found a few bulbs that I thought were good, but they didn't specify exact wavelengths.

One advertises itself as a 6,500k "tropical sun". My research tells me this type of bulb provides both 435 nm and 615 nm. Then I also bought one called "red wave". This appears to be an 8,000k and produces light at the 660nm range.

Will this be a good setup? Should I swap out the red bulb and get another 6500k? I'm sure it would be helpful if I could tell you what I'm growing but I'm still undecided on that beyond alpine strawberries. Also probably worth mentioning is this will be at my desk at work which gets no direct sunlight, so I need these bulbs to handle all the lighting needs.

Thanks in advance for your replies!

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