# Lighting a 10g, and other details



## gerbillo (Dec 5, 2013)

I'm new to the freshwater and planted world. I'm setting up a 10g AGA low tech tank that's in need of lighting. Would a regular FugeRay 20" would provide enough light without being too bright? The new FugeRay Planted+ seems too bright. I'm trying to take into consideration that I already have 3" of ADA Amazonia substrate in a tank that's 12" tall. Other lights can you recommend, especially LEDs?

This is the part of my reef keeping experience that has led me astray: I'm used to cycling with nothing but rock, substrate and saltwater, so my tank already has freshwater, soil, and a single Anubias nana. My understanding now is to cycle while heavily planted. I could start getting some new plants as soon as I get the light, but could I also plant slowly?

For filtration it's running on an Eheim Classic 2213 with the stock media (sans the carbon) and 100mL of Purigen. It seems to be enough flow and filtration to me.

I'll worry about fauna much later after the tank stabilizes; I'm patient. I'm an invertebrate guy so I'm already eyeing my army of shrimp. I might throw in a token fish like an Oto to appease the rest of the world.

Thanks!


----------



## mistuhmarc (Oct 1, 2013)

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=189944 

Here's a link to the PAR data for all Finnex Products prior to the FugeRay Planted+. With 3" of ADA amazonia already in the tank, at the surface of your substrate you'd likely have around 70-80 ish PAR leaving your tank in medium high light. 

With your question on planting, yes you can cycle both ways, a fishless cycle or add plants which as to allow them to absorb nitrate and other nutrients to help with the cycle. But yes, you can plant slowly, you don't have to be in a rush!


----------



## gerbillo (Dec 5, 2013)

mistuhmarc said:


> http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=189944
> 
> Here's a link to the PAR data for all Finnex Products prior to the FugeRay Planted+. With 3" of ADA amazonia already in the tank, at the surface of your substrate you'd likely have around 70-80 ish PAR leaving your tank in medium high light.
> 
> With your question on planting, yes you can cycle both ways, a fishless cycle or add plants which as to allow them to absorb nitrate and other nutrients to help with the cycle. But yes, you can plant slowly, you don't have to be in a rush!


That's too bright for what I'm planning. Is my substrate too high? I've read here that 3" is a good depth. I could figure out ways to lower the amount of light that makes it to the bottom, like a screen. Or is there another good LED that will do the job?


----------



## Bryk (Feb 26, 2013)

I currently have a 30" planted + on a 20L which is 12" deep before the substrate, its only been a week but so far so good.

I think a fugeray would give you medium to medium-low, while a planted + would give you medium to medium-high. It depends on what strength you are looking for.

(Owner of 12 Finnex fixtures).

In terms of plants, if you go lightly planted like most people, your tank will still cycle, if you heavily plant with some "weeds" or heavy feeders you can go cycleless if you plant enough to start.

If you go heavily planted and don't have enough light, (most weeds don't even need heavy ferts) for the fast growers (weeds), then it won't work out as well. 

You have to be careful with it, essentially you want to plant whatever you want in the tank, then you just put some anacharis or other weed floating, or out of the way so the plants you want to get light still get light. You have to leave this going until your plants that you want get used to the tank, once they do and start growing, you can then take out the weeds if you want (if you have enough of tank planted with situated plants).

Even with the weed plants, I would put them in with the lighting and give them a chance to see if they start growing first before putting in a lot of bioload(fish). (This is to confirm you have met their lighting requirements and can see their behavior if they adapted or not)

If you aren't looking to stock a tank heavy quickly then you can adjust this to your needs as you see fit.

If you lightly plant, and keep planting as you go until the tank is heavily planted and keep it lightly stocked as you go that should work out equally as well which it sounds closer to what you want to do. Then once the plants are all in that you want and it is heavily planted you can go from there.

Just don't put in 2-3 slow growing plants, and a heavy bioload right away and expect it to work out well.

The concern is there is no middle ground, either the plants can absorb the fish waste fast enough to prevent a cycle, or they can't and your tank will start a cycle. 

I personally should try to create a guideline sheet seeing as i am up to 6 tanks now :O I heavily plant all of my tanks. I've been learning a lot as to what works and doesn't so far.


----------



## shawnwaldon (Dec 5, 2013)

I personally do a fishless cycle with some type of chemical like stability and add some plants. It usually takes around 2 weeks to fully cycle. With a small tank like a 10 gallon I would just get the plants you want and do it all at once. That is what I did for my 10 gallon. 








[/URL][/IMG]


----------



## Bryk (Feb 26, 2013)

shawnwaldon said:


> I personally do a fishless cycle with some type of chemical like stability and add some plants. It usually takes around 2 weeks to fully cycle. With a small tank like a 10 gallon I would just get the plants you want and do it all at once. That is what I did for my 10 gallon.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yeah, definitely an option for a lightly planted tank, nice tank btw.


----------



## gerbillo (Dec 5, 2013)

Thanks everyone, that helps. I won't be stocking any animals until well after the cycle is done.

I'll start adding plants as soon as I get proper lighting. If it weren't with the substrate I'll be fine with the FugeRay. Is 3" too much? It seems to be the most common recommended depth based on searching the forums.

I found another potential fixture, the Current Satellite LED (not the plus one). It's lower wattage (7.5W vs 10W of the Finnex), but it's apparently dimmable so I can dial the brightness in appropriate for low light plants. Does it sound good?


----------



## Sluggo (Nov 6, 2010)

gerbillo said:


> I won't be stocking any animals until well after the cycle is done.


Maybe somebody else can address this, but you can get away with not stocking a cycled marine tank because there are all kinds of critters on the live rock that will continue to produce waste and keep the cycle going. Not sure that is true in freshwater. I think without livestock it may eventually become essentially an uncycled tank again.


----------



## shawnwaldon (Dec 5, 2013)

Sluggo said:


> Maybe somebody else can address this, but you can get away with not stocking a cycled marine tank because there are all kinds of critters on the live rock that will continue to produce waste and keep the cycle going. Not sure that is true in freshwater. I think without livestock it may eventually become essentially an uncycled tank again.


You can keep a freshwater tank with no live stock as long as your putting some type of chemical in the water to keep the bacteria you need in the tank.


----------



## shawnwaldon (Dec 5, 2013)

gerbillo said:


> Thanks everyone, that helps. I won't be stocking any animals until well after the cycle is done.
> 
> I'll start adding plants as soon as I get proper lighting. If it weren't with the substrate I'll be fine with the FugeRay. Is 3" too much? It seems to be the most common recommended depth based on searching the forums.
> 
> I found another potential fixture, the Current Satellite LED (not the plus one). It's lower wattage (7.5W vs 10W of the Finnex), but it's apparently dimmable so I can dial the brightness in appropriate for low light plants. Does it sound good?


Generally you want around 2 to 3 inches of substrait. I personally stick with 2 in my tanks. As far as lighting goes I am a fan of Finnex so I am kinda biased.


----------



## shawnwaldon (Dec 5, 2013)

Bryk said:


> Yeah, definitely an option for a lightly planted tank, nice tank btw.


Thanks now it's time to let everything grow in.


----------



## Sluggo (Nov 6, 2010)

shawnwaldon said:


> You can keep a freshwater tank with no live stock as long as your putting some type of chemical in the water to keep the bacteria you need in the tank.


That's what I thought. Thanks for confirming. I suppose the OP could put some snails or something in there, though.


----------



## gerbillo (Dec 5, 2013)

shawnwaldon said:


> Generally you want around 2 to 3 inches of substrait. I personally stick with 2 in my tanks. As far as lighting goes I am a fan of Finnex so I am kinda biased.


Thanks, I'll remove an inch off my substrate. I read a lot of references to 3" being suitable, but I'm guessing now that it's for larger tanks, not my little 10g. I would love the Finnex, but I'm just concerned that the light would be too bright for what I'm looking for. The plants I'm considering are low light and I'm not gonna add CO2, and I don't plan on becoming an algae farmer.



shawnwaldon said:


> You can keep a freshwater tank with no live stock as long as your putting some type of chemical in the water to keep the bacteria you need in the tank.


That's right, I have a small piece of leftover silverside in there for now, providing the breakdown products to feed the bacteria, until I can find pure ammonia this weekend. I'm not gonna subject a critter that I don't intend to keep to the harsh environment during cycling.

Anyway, I realized that there's no reason to run Purigen right now during a cycle so I just removed it.


----------



## gerbillo (Dec 5, 2013)

Alright, I've decided on the FugeRay. I found details searching the forums on using window screen dampen the brightness sufficiently for low light. Thanks!


----------



## shawnwaldon (Dec 5, 2013)

Another light you can go with that I use on my 5 gallon is a T2 fluorescent fixture. I have used them on my 10 gallon before and they worked great for low to medium plants. Never had any problems with algae either. The person I get mine from charges right around $32 per fixture so they are inexpensive. The 13 watt 17" fixture would be a good fit for a 10 gallon tank. The website is www.americanaquariumproducts.com and the owners name is Carl. They are very knowledgeable and helpful. You will generally get a response to any inquiry within a couple hours.


----------



## shawnwaldon (Dec 5, 2013)

Another thing that is cool about these lights are you can mount them in the existing plastic hood with very few modifications. Also the bulb is enclosed and you can turn the housing to point the light anywhere in the tank which is good of you use medium light plants for the foreground and low light plants for the background because you can put the light in the middle of the tank and just point it more toward the front of the tank.


----------



## lochaber (Jan 23, 2012)

gerbillo said:


> Thanks, I'll remove an inch off my substrate. I read a lot of references to 3" being suitable, but I'm guessing now that it's for larger tanks, not my little 10g.
> ...
> until I can find pure ammonia this weekend. I'm not gonna subject a critter that I don't intend to keep to the harsh environment during cycling.


I wouldn't worry too much about the substrate. The biggest negative of a deep substrate is that it cuts into your tank's height/volume. On a bigger tank, it may not make much of a difference, but on a 10 gallon, 4" of substrate will use up 1/3 of your vertical space.

As to the cycling, you can skip a day or two here and there without serious problems. Once you find the ammonia, just keep adding that in to keep the tank cycled, and then stop and do a water change before you stock the tank.


----------



## gerbillo (Dec 5, 2013)

lochaber said:


> I wouldn't worry too much about the substrate. The biggest negative of a deep substrate is that it cuts into your tank's height/volume. On a bigger tank, it may not make much of a difference, but on a 10 gallon, 4" of substrate will use up 1/3 of your vertical space.
> 
> As to the cycling, you can skip a day or two here and there without serious problems. Once you find the ammonia, just keep adding that in to keep the tank cycled, and then stop and do a water change before you stock the tank.


I reduced it to 2", I like the look better.

I have the bottle of ammonia, but I haven't added any because the small piece of dead fish is doing a really good job generating ammonia. Perhaps some of it is from the fresh Aqua Soil as well.


----------



## shawnwaldon (Dec 5, 2013)

gerbillo said:


> I reduced it to 2", I like the look better.
> 
> I have the bottle of ammonia, but I haven't added any because the small piece of dead fish is doing a really good job generating ammonia. Perhaps some of it is from the fresh Aqua Soil as well.


Make sure that ammonia has no detergents in it before you use it. A good way to tell is shake it and if it bubbles or foams at the top it has detergents in it and you can't use it. It is very difficult to find true pure ammonia.


----------



## gerbillo (Dec 5, 2013)

shawnwaldon said:


> Make sure that ammonia has no detergents in it before you use it. A good way to tell is shake it and if it bubbles or foams at the top it has detergents in it and you can't use it. It is very difficult to find true pure ammonia.


Yup, it's Ace Hardware's janitorial strength ammonia, so no detergents or other funny ingredients.


----------

