Lighting for Aquarium?
by Aquaboy on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 | 2 Comments
Hello AQUA EXPERTS.
Ok, So if i have a light hood 23.25 inch long and uses 2 incandesent light bulbs. I heard incandesent light doesn’t promote plants growth so what if i put in energy efficient light bulbs which are combat floursent light bulbs.
will that work ?
So should i buy a real T5 or T8 lighting fixture or is it ok to just use energy efficient bulbs? My current hood holds 2 incandsent bulbs so i want to know if it a good idea to replace it with energy efficient ones.
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I use one T8 30watt Aqua glo in my 50Gallon aquarium, plants are taking to it excellent.
I first tried other aternatives, but the results are just not really that benificial. Though, with the aditional help of outdoor light in the room helped my aquarium to thrive before i got the T8 30watt Aqua glo.
There are always other possible ways to go about things, but… it is always best to use the properly made items.
A T-5 or T-8 strip would be fantastic, offering much more output and much more useful light. However, they also come with a much higher price tag. You are correct about incandescent light being useless alone (it can be used to supplement strongly blue light, but that requires a lot of room and a lot of work), but switching to compact fluorescents (the swirly ones) of the same wattage is a great idea. I just did this on my 10 gallon tank, switching from a standard fluorescent tube to an incandescent hood and 2 15 watt, 5,500K compact fluorescents. The growth is now very noticeable and came at a much cheaper price than fluorescent tubes.
T-5/T-8 is better than CFLs, and both are MUCH better than incandescents, so anything would be an upgrade from incandescents; it just depends how much you want to spend.