Posted by:
Matt Campbell
at Sun Feb 19 18:23:14 2006 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Matt Campbell ]
The main thing in raising plants in a vivarium is having high enough light intensity in wavelengths that plants need to grow. A typical UV fixture with one or two bulbs doesn't put out enough light at a high enough intensity to do plants much good. It won't necessarily cause them to die, but your plants just won't thrive. Some plants which DO like higher light intensity [like Herpzilla's Ficus] will actually be killed eventually because they simply can't get enough like to photosynthesize properly. The major trade-off comes from having smaller enclosures that tend to be much hotter and with more poor lighting than most plants can tolerate or having really high intensity light which might be good for the plants but may drive your herps into hiding more. The best balance would be to have a large enough vivarium that your lights could be at least 2 to 3 feet above your plants so you could use high intensity light. If you planted the vivarium lushly enough the animals wouldn't be as stressed because you'd have areas of high and low intesity light hitting the floor of the vivarium. So, UVB and plants - not necessary and really not beneficial. Go with either a full spectrum daylight fluorescent from a company like FEIT [compacts are the best] or go with a dedicated plant grow bulb which will be a more reddish hue which you will still need to balance out with a really bright daylight spectrum bulb. Finally don't confuse full-spectrum with UVB/UVA bulbs - the two are very different. Full-spectrum bulbs only put out light that mimics the color spectrum and intensity of natural sunlight [minimum 5000k color temperature with a color rendering index {CRI} of 80 or higher].
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Matt Campbell
Big animals, little animals, plants - right down to the sea itself. We need them, not just for their own sake, but because all this has to be here for everybody forever. Only one thing is certain: if we are to preserve our environment and save this priceless wildlife we need much, much more knowledge.
Harry Butler from 'In the Wild With Harry Butler' 1977
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RE: water lettuce UVB for plants? - Matt Campbell, Sun Feb 19 18:23:14 2006