In article .com,
dfreas wrote:
Interesting. And almost certainly correct - I figured there was a loss
from the shape but didn't think it might be as significant as you
suggest. I think I will continue with the test for now just to see what
happens. I don't think I'm going to change to tube lighting - mostly
because I'm only growing low to mid light plants in this tank anyway
but I may start thinking about ways to modify my current setup to get
more of the light into the tank. Deffinately something to put some
thought into.

Well, it's a point source of light, not a strip, so, look to
exampled of other point sources of light. For example, metal halide
bulbs. They use either batwing reflectors or pendants.

I found some cheap ($1) reflectors at a salvage place. Combined
with cheap ($1) 11W screwins from "Dollorama" they make, well,
a reasonable $2 light for a small tank:

http://images.aquaria.net/hw/lights/pendants/cheap/

For screwins in incandescent fixtures about the best I could do
is use the heat and moisture resistant mylar from hydroponics.com
and these fixtures are on my daughters tanks that have crypts
and java fern:

http://images.aquaria.net/hw/lights/screwins/


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