"Tasslehoff" wrote in message u...
He might be referring to the chunky household CF's which are now available
here in Australia. Damned if I can find any of those thin fandangled 55W
aquarium ones here.


Sorry for any confusion. I'm talking about the electronic compact
fluoros that are meant to replace a normal incandescent light globe to
'save power'.

I have seen several posts here about them being the most inefficient
fluoro lighting you can get - in terms of lighting a tank uniformly.
So I was wondering if this is so, then why was my tank so much
brighter with them than with normal fluoro tubes. Obviously if both
setups produce roughly the same amount of lumens, this is probably
more a question of reflector efficiency or light losses from different
tube shapes, or something.

So I'm just interested to know if anyone else has tried these lamps,
and found them to be better or worse than normal fluoro tubes. At the
moment, the only disadvantage I can see is the huge amount of heat
given out by the electronic ballast. Sure, they figure to 52.5
lumens/W when the normal fluoro tubes are around 68 lumens/W. But even
after trying different reflectors, I'd need at least another tube - or
probably two - to equal the light intensity I'm getting from the CFL
setup. Sorry I don't have a lux meter to give you figures on this. But
the difference is just too damn noticable by the human eye.

BTW, if anyone here in Australia is interested in using these for a
cheap or temporary lighting system, the lamps are made by Canopower,
and can be found at many of the bargain centres around the country (I
got mine at Clints).

Dave