Oh. How high above the tortoises do you plan on having the bulbs? The high output 10.0 bulbs and high output fixtures are good at 20 inches. What kind of tortoises do you have? Are you basically dedicating an entire room to this? That would be so cool.
Electrical timers
- Thread starter Anyfoot
- Start date
Anything between 5 and 7ft. The terrain will be uneven. This will work to my advantage with different thermal layers with the enclosure. I hope.
I didn't know any bulb would reach that far.
Hi Tina. Look at the link I posted on page 3. Jaizei found me those a while back. Bye.
If you were only using the bulbs for an hour a day, I'd have a hard time believing that they would cease UVB production before blowing. The 12 months of lifespan is based on average use (x hours per day), using as you described should increase the lifespan of UVB production. The supplier may have been conflating lifespan with warranty period. Megaray are well known for producing UVB for longer than their warranty period even with average use.
Although I've seen things suggesting that plants may benefit from UV in some way (didn't get too deep into it), conventional wisdom is that they only utilize visible light (different types of chlorophyll absorb different wavelengths) for photosynthesis.
This is something I've tried to research and get conflicting information. So you are saying that plants don't have to have uv just visible light to grow.
Nice as it is to try to mimic the sun moving, can I chip in that all that happens in an outdoor enclosure is that the tort moves it's basking spot with the sun... even here in the UK.
It seems a bit over the top to recreate this indoors. But whatever suits you.
It seems a bit over the top to recreate this indoors. But whatever suits you.
I wasn't interested in mimicing the suns movement. I was thinking to get plants to grow in a large indoor area they would need there fair share of uv. If I don't need uv for plants and just standard light will do I can just have 1 uv light for the torts benefit. Do I need uv for plants to grow. Or does this differ from plant types. Thanks.
As I said, I didn't get that in depth when I read the bit about plants utilizing UV. As far as I know, most that use grow lights do not provide UVB. Whichever lights you end up using will provide some UVA so they'll get that at the very least. I've used grow lights to over winter plants before, and just used a standard HID grow light. Didn't worry about UVB at all.
Now that's music to my ears. So I can have 1 uvb like Tom said. And background standard lights like you suggested. Next question then is. Do you know if I can use LED lights for the back ground lighting. Where I work we are replacing all the 400watt metal halide lights for 120watt LEDs. You get the same amount of light for a longer period(5 yrs they reckon). There's no initial surge of power to start up/they are sealed so humidity won't affect them and they are not a fire hazard. Can get them as low as 10watts.
I use LED lights to brighten the enclosure and have not seen any issues (eyes are open and normal). They don't add heat so it's easier to create microclimates in the enclosure.
Thank you. Heat from a bulb is wasted energy that costs money. Obviously in the reptile world we try to make use of the heat, but I don't want heat from the light source. What wattage are you using and what size environment is it. Thank you again.
LED grow lights are something that I've thought about playing with for a long time but haven't had the time. Cost wise, HO fluorescent might be more economical, though this is just a feeling if you will and I haven't actually compared the numbers.
