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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!elroy!gryphon!richard
From: richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton)
Newsgroups: alt.aquaria,sci.bio,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Too Clean???
Keywords: How do you get plants to grow??
Message-ID: <14976@gryphon.COM>
Date: 22 Apr 89 02:12:37 GMT
Reply-To: richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton)
Followup-To: alt.aquaria
Distribution: na
Organization: Trailing Edge Technology, Redondo Beach, CA
Lines: 26

In article <1626@blake.acs.washington.edu> tom@blake.acs.washington.edu (Tom Bunch) writes:
>In article <14753@gryphon.COM> richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) writes:
>>
>>It's really hard to say. Conventional wisdom dictates that 
>>with enough artificial light, you should be able to grow
>>anything. Well thats great, but I've noticed two modes:
>>with two flourescent tubes in a fixture over my 40 gal tank
>>I get algae, everywhere. With only one tube, nothing seems
>>to grow much.
>
>This doesn't exactly solve this particular problem, but the
>useful life of aquarium bulbs as far as plant growth is concerned
>seems to be about 6 months.  After that I understand the bulb
>ceases production of the useful wavelengths of light.  I can't
>explain why the algae will grow while the plants die, though.

Does anybody know more about this notion that flourescent tubes
cease to produce plant-usable light after a while?

Somehow the idea of replacing all my flourescent tubes every
six months is not terribly appealing.

-- 
       ``But why are you taking your money out of a solvent bank ?''  - Me
          ``Because you can't get it out of an insolvent one'' - Him
richard@gryphon.COM  decwrl!gryphon!richard   gryphon!richard@elroy.jpl.NASA.GOV