Day 14 - Let There Be Light

Trimmed a few more yellowed Vallis leaves, at this rate I should have successfully eliminated all the plants within two months. Oh wait...

There are more and more cables and tubes being connected up to the tank. About time I fitted a background I think to hide this mess.

Fluval Roma 125 T5 Lighting Mod
Time to upgrade the lighting in this tank. It's 33 US gallons, so with the two 20 watt lights that's a mere 1.2 watts per gallon. Dark enough to grow mushrooms.

I was all set to write a long and detailed post how to mod the tank to upgrade the lighting with some additional T5 lights, but it turned out to be so simple it's almost not worth mentioning. Although not the cheapest mod in the world.

I wanted to add two extra 24 watt T5 lights along side the existing 20 watt T8's. I purchased a Hagen Glo T5 HO Twin Light Starter (2x 24W) for £40 from the LFS and two Arcadia T5 Plant Pro bulbs for £15 each.


This T5 starter unit from Hagen is just ideal for the Fluval Roma 125. I connected the light mounts (included in the box) to the front and rear of the tank hood, as in the photo below. Note these are the new lights in the photo, the T8's are hidden from view by the central plastic cover.


It was such a perfect fit that the lights stayed in place without even fixing the mounts to the side, held in place just by the pressure from the mains leads. I ended up just securing the mounts with a tiny dab of super glue, small enough that I could easily pull the mounts off again if I had too but strong enough to keep the lights in place when I give them an accidental knock.


And that was it. Easy and painless.

So how many watts per gallon now? Well, at face value of the wattage we have 20+20+24+24, 88 watts, or 2.7 watts per gallon.

But it's said T5's produce more light than T8's and it's pretty obvious when you look at the lit bulbs that this is true. The Arcadia Plant Pro bulb packaging says, "80% increased power". So if we took this to be true we'd have 20+20+43.2+43.2, 126.4 watts, or 3.8 watts per gallon.

So minimum 2.7 watts per gallon, maximum 3.8 watts per gallon. Mission successful!