Plant lights for small tanks?

[Cattitude]

I have 5 tanks which came with incandescent bulbs. I'd like to try growing live plants in my tanks. I'd be sticking with low light plants because my apartment faces north and I don't get a huge amount of natural direct light.

What kind of small light bulbs would work best for plants? Are the ones that came with the tanks OK or should I replace them? Is fluorescent or incandescent best?

I checked at the pet store and found some similarly-sized bulbs that were packaged as "plant-friendly" but they didn't give a k rating. Here's an example.

[Anitax3x]

check Walmart they have 6500k bulbs for smaller tanks for like $5 I'm actually going to go buy some because I'm planning on making my 1.75gal an NPT. You should contact a member called OldFishLady she knows EVERYTHING about plants!

[kfryman]

Yeah they make bulbs like that, I have two of them, they are a spiral type bulb that just screws in. Fluorescent is what you want to use, incandescent gets super hot anyways so I don't like using them.

I got mine at Petco but they were expensive for a little light bulb, so check Walmart or a Home Improvement store, just make sure they say plant or 6500k, any where need 6500k is fine as well.