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Ok, last time I checked, which has been a while so things could have changed, but there was no *confirmed* best lighting temperature for plants. I know the *agreed upon* temperature is 6700K. However, I have heard of reports of people growing plants in full actinic.

Now I just got two Coralife mini compact flourescent 20 watt 50/50 bulbs. I'm putting them in a incandescent fixture for a ten gallon planted tank, aka;40 watts. I also have a 15 Hagen Flora-glow bulb, for a grand total of 55 watts. Even with the reports of growing plants with actinic, i bet there was a LOT of actinic, I doutb that the actinic side of these 50/50s will grow the plants very well.

Anyway, to the point, does anyone have any experiance with 50/50s on a planted tank, and if so, what are your results. Also, I'm thinking of putting a 10 watt 6700K bulb on one side and a 20 watt 50/50 on the other and seeing what happens. Anyway, I just want some input...

Mixing different light bulbs especially in a setup like a 10g hood is going to make the tank look really odd. I buy sunlight bulbs from walmart for quite cheap to use in my 5-10g tanks. For the larger tanks I've always just left the saltwater bulbs in the fixture. So usually half 10,000k and half actinic and between 3-4wpg. The plants grew just fine and the algae didn't unless my co2 quit working. Then the glass would get coated in spot algae. For the 90g I currently have two 65w 10,000k, two 65w actinic, and two 40w flora glo. Flora glo have alot of red and when mixed with actinics I've found they grow plants quite well. However if not placed over the tank just right you'll have red areas and blue areas as well as the fish and plant colors looking quite odd. Having too much of 1 spectrum of light compared to the others will just waste light. It's better to use a full spectrum bulb between 6500k and 10,000k to keep an even amount of lighting and color to all areas of the tank. Of course if you don't really care about the look of the tank and just want to grow out some plants the purplish bulbs designed only for growing plants would probably work even better.