Paludarium

[Mat]

O.K. my first question:

I'm building a paludarium, and one of the questions I'm having trouble answering is What kind of lighting do you think I should be using? I need it to fill the legnth of the 4' vivarium and the 18" of aquarium. I was thinking of using double ended metal halides cause they are smaller and I could fit more under the hood, but I don't have any experience using them. I also thought of compact flourecents, but I don't know if they will penetrate the water well enough to grow aquatic plants.

Any ideas or suggestions would be great.

[Marty]

I'd go with compact fluorescent

check out ahsupply.com I just ordered the 55W 6500K bright lights, very nice ! Planty of light and great looking colour

[Greg H.]

Go with the CF's, easier to replace, and they don't produce all the heat.

Make them more effective, by using a reflective surface behind them. I took out that little piece of metal in the hood of my 15 gal tall, and wrapping the twin light sockets with newspaper. I then sprayed an even layer of silver paint over the entire inner surface, of the light hood, making the entire hood a reflector.

While the wattage for the twin lights are not to excede 50 W, buy putting 2 100 W equivlent CF's the total wattage is only 40 W or so, but with the entire hood being painted silver, I greatly increased the total light, even at the bottom of the tank.

[Gone_Fishin]

I would also recomend the compact fluorecents, though with the size of your paludarium the higher wattage 4-pin style like AH's would probably be better than a bunch of the screw-ins.
Maybe I'm just reading it wrong, but when you say you need it to fill the 4' of terrarium and 18'' of aquarium are you talking about the horizontal length or how far vertically you need the light to penetrate? If you have a picture or a diagram with dimensions I think that would help.

[Marty]

btw, AHsupply.com sells very good reflectors with their kits. I have 8 55W CF lights. Before I had the 9000K bulbs, I switched to the 6500K bright ones and can't believe the difference, it's like twice the light. They also have the 96W bulbs which is insanly bright !!! Put two of those and you'll get cops ramming in your door thinking that you have a grow house

[Tindomul1of9]

I would investigate some T5's. I've heard they are the brightest, and produce the least heat.

[Mat]

Yeah, I have a couple of T5's over my 30g aquarium. They work great.

I based my design on a completed Paludarium I found online. (I'll upload a picture in a sec) It's pretty much identical to the one in the picture, just naked at the moment. No plants, background or anything. It's got 4' of space above the waterline. What I need to do, is to get enough light from the top of the Paludarium, down the 4' of space and to penetrate the 18" of water. I'm think'in I'll have to use quite a few CF's to do it well enough so that I can get the intensity to maintain a planted aquarium. That's why I was thinking on using MH's. 'Cause the light is more intense than CF's. That's just my thoughts though.

Here's the problem as I see it. Most Vivariums I see that use CF's have a foot or so of space before the light touches the water, then the water is only a couple of inches deep at most. That works great, but I’ve doubled the air space and quadrupled the aquatic space. So I'm not sure if CF's would be powerful enough. Or, I might need quite a few CF's to accomplish what I need. Although, that said, I could be way wrong. I dunno.

[Mat]

Hey Greg H. what's that plant that's on the right side and directly in front of that piece of drift wood?

[Greg H.]

I have absolutly no idea.

I went into a local fish store, and they had a special on 6 misc plants for $8.00, so I took it.

The lower stems usualy start growing out to the side to get light, and if they grow that way to long, the stem will start throwing out roots, and more stems.

The closer to the light, the larger the leaves get, but when the stem reaches the surface, they just start wandering all over the place, but, then get kind of spindly.

The tank is mainly for Bumble Bee shrimp, but, I has developed a fairly large scud population in the past year. I doubt that I have fed it at all in the last 4 months or so, as they eat the algae and the Aponogetons.

[Gone_Fishin]

Looks like some type of Rotala species to me. Maybe Rotala indica ?