Glo T8 Lighting Tubes

So, I got some blue LEDs for Christmas and have chickened out of replacing my T8s with white LEDs just yet (sorry Chucklett!  ).

But my T8s do need replacing. At the moment I have one power-glo tube and one aqua-glo tube in my tank. I am trying to decide which colours of tube I should go for to optimise plant growth and fish aesthetics. (I'm thinking perhaps one warmer colour and one more white / blue). But I am struggling to find spectrum graphs for the Hagen glo-tubes. I am getting myself in a pickle over what the words really mean in the various descriptions (good white light spectrum, ideal for plant growth, best for community fish...) and whether this really is the case. I find it a bit easier to understand the numbers!

Can anyone point me in the direction of some of this information in number format?

Btw, I have pulled out all the lux and lumen info from the Hagen lighting guide.  I will be happy to post my little comparison sheet for others to use, when I've found all the information.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Ady,

I was hoping to try and find information on the spectrum of the lighting tubes because I supplement the T8s with red and blue LEDs. These are mainly for aesthetic effect rather than to promote plant growth, but I don't want to disrupt the balance of light / nutrients in my tank.

It is interesting what you said about the blue light causing a problem with the algae. I haven't yet got my blue LEDs hooked up with a timer and one evening I forgot to turn them off. I noticed the following day that I had a snail explosion. I was trying to work out whether the overnight algae growth could have been so significant that it created the snail explosion so quickly or whether something else had happened in my tank.

The purpose of the blue LEDs was to give the effect of overcast daylight (or moonlight) in the siesta period I have during the day. I've still not decided what timing schedule these LEDs need to be on to optimise the aesthetic effect and plant growth. Thought it is starting to look like they don't need to be on at the same time as the white lights, unless I balance out the colour temperature (degrees K) with a lot more red light.

This is the kelvin rating I was trying to explain but looking back did a really poor job sorry.
The curved line in the middle with the numbers from 2,000 onwards is the degrees kelvin temp.
2,000 being sunrise orange
4,000 sunlight white to yellow
5,500 clear sky warm white
6,500 over cast red
9,000 clear sunlight cool blue
14,000 and beyond actinic clear sky sea light used for marine
This is just real basic as all visible light contains light from all of the spectrum to some degree and to go into how wavelengths of light are separated and absorbed by different mediums I can just understand but cant really explain fully sorry.
Simply put light from the sun starts out as full spectrum light when it passes through atmospheric cloud cover for example some of its blue wavelength is lost and the light gets skewed towards the red wavelength, there is still blue light in there as well as green but the red is dominant. when this then hits a surface blues and greens don't show up as bright and red shows up bright. All light is good for plants and can be used for photosynthesis but generally red light around the 6,500 is said to be best for plant growth with less algae growth.
Most companies recommend either white day light, or a mix of two to show up different colours in the tank, generally what they say in the gunff on the pack is not far of.
With the moonlight leds it depends on the rating on them I would take a guess they say 420 nm and not DK.
nm is a rating of invisible light 420nm is UV 650nm is infra red, the vast majority of algae cant use this light, the only ones I know of are the marine algae that grow in coral and are need for healthy coral growth.
I have never kept reef tanks so sorry if this is not quite right.
Sorry if this is a bit heavy and hope it helps,
                                                               ady