Hi,

Today I bought a shop-light fluorescent fixture from Home Depot and am
planning to suspend it from the ceiling above the aquarium. It's four feet
long (even though my aquarium is two feet long) and has a ballast that takes
two 40W T8 tubes. For some reason I thought that all the major aquatic plant
lights (like Hagen's Aqua-Glo or Power-Glo or Sylvania's Gro-Lux) ar in fact
T8, but after I brought the lamp home and checked, it seems that the *-Glo
series at the right length are all T10 and Gro-Lux are T12. Another reason
why I bought a fixture with a T8 ballast was that the store did not have any
electric T12's.

In any case, I would like to know if I made a mistake in buying this lamp.
Should I perhaps return it before it's assembled and find something else?

Thanks in advance!

--
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War
IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein

"Jeff Ludwig" jeff at rockytop_dot_net writes:

In any case, I would like to know if I made a mistake in buying this lamp.
Should I perhaps return it before it's assembled and find something else?

What is the make of ballast and how large is the tank in question? Home
despot sells an electronic ballast (GE) designed for driving 4 F32T8s which
is very reasonably priced and good for DIY projects. This gives you a lot
of flexability, it's model number: #B432I120RHHD

Check out:
http://www.gelighting.com/na/downloads/ballast.pdf
it can drive much more than the 4xF32T8s... unfortunately the document is
kinda hard to x-ref.


Thanks for the response!

My aquarium is a tall 20 gal. (75L) measuring 24"x12"x16". The reason I chose
48" lighting is because I can hang it above the aquarium and it is more
reusable than 24", that would be the right length for this tank (e.g. I can
use it in the garage if I decide not to continue the hobby or reuse it if I
want to get larger aquarium).

The ballast in the fixture I bought is an instant-start electronic one that
can drive two T8, 32W fluorescent tubes and is manufactured by Advance
Transformer. It seems to work fine and all, but I'm a bit worried about
finding tubes for it. It seems that the manufacturers of specialty aquarium
bulbs only make them in T12 or T10 format[*], so I'm stuck with general
purpose ones from Philips [**]. Would you recommend that I try to get a
refund on that and buy a 4-bulb T12 ballast/fixture+ballast instead or is what
I have good enough? Going by the watt-per-gallon rule of thumb, the lighting
should be enough (62W/20 gal = 3.1 W/gal).

* By the way, do you know if one can use T10 bulbs with a T8 ballast?
** What would be the optimal color temperature and/or CRI for plants and
fish? Philips has bulbs ranging from 3000K to 6500K temperature and
CRI from 75 to 98. Would any of these be good enough?

Again, thanks for the response!

Richard

P.S. Sorry for replying to late, my news reader marks all articles that are
without a parent as read and I didn't notice it until I went to Usenet
archives at Google to search for some info about T10 bulbs.

--
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War
IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein

zoomed makes T-8's that will work with that ballast. I am using them
now. Check out:

http://www.zoomed.com/html/lites.html

Richard Krush wrote:
"Jeff Ludwig" jeff at rockytop_dot_net writes:


In any case, I would like to know if I made a mistake in buying this lamp.
Should I perhaps return it before it's assembled and find something else?

What is the make of ballast and how large is the tank in question? Home
despot sells an electronic ballast (GE) designed for driving 4 F32T8s which
is very reasonably priced and good for DIY projects. This gives you a lot
of flexability, it's model number: #B432I120RHHD

Check out:
http://www.gelighting.com/na/downloads/ballast.pdf
it can drive much more than the 4xF32T8s... unfortunately the document is
kinda hard to x-ref.



Thanks for the response!

My aquarium is a tall 20 gal. (75L) measuring 24"x12"x16". The reason I chose
48" lighting is because I can hang it above the aquarium and it is more
reusable than 24", that would be the right length for this tank (e.g. I can
use it in the garage if I decide not to continue the hobby or reuse it if I
want to get larger aquarium).

The ballast in the fixture I bought is an instant-start electronic one that
can drive two T8, 32W fluorescent tubes and is manufactured by Advance
Transformer. It seems to work fine and all, but I'm a bit worried about
finding tubes for it. It seems that the manufacturers of specialty aquarium
bulbs only make them in T12 or T10 format[*], so I'm stuck with general
purpose ones from Philips [**]. Would you recommend that I try to get a
refund on that and buy a 4-bulb T12 ballast/fixture+ballast instead or is what
I have good enough? Going by the watt-per-gallon rule of thumb, the lighting
should be enough (62W/20 gal = 3.1 W/gal).

* By the way, do you know if one can use T10 bulbs with a T8 ballast?
** What would be the optimal color temperature and/or CRI for plants and
fish? Philips has bulbs ranging from 3000K to 6500K temperature and
CRI from 75 to 98. Would any of these be good enough?

Again, thanks for the response!

Richard

P.S. Sorry for replying to late, my news reader marks all articles that are
without a parent as read and I didn't notice it until I went to Usenet
archives at Google to search for some info about T10 bulbs.

Dan Milligan writes:

zoomed makes T-8's that will work with that ballast. I am using them now.
Check out:

http://www.zoomed.com/html/lites.html


Thank you for the information! Right now I'm in the process of testing how my
plants will grow with two Philips F32T8 TL850 (5000K color temperature and 86
CRI). I'm also intrigued by two other Philips bulbs, but local hardware
stores didn't seem to have those. One is TL865, which has color temperature
of 6500K and CRI of 86 and the second one is TL950 with 5000K c.t. and CRI of
_98_! The latter especially sounds very promising.

Have you tried any of the above mentioned bulbs or the OCTRON series from
Sylvania?

Richard

--
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War
IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein

I'd stick with regular 4' tubes personally, economy of
scale dictates you've got a wider choice of tubes
from different manufacturors and at a cheaper price
than non 4' sizes. SOmething like 90% of all tubes made
are the regular 4's.

My two favorites are Philips colortone 50 for a 5000K light
(it is on paper brighter then the other 5K bulbs) and
any wide specrum grolux. The Philips AgroLite seeme to be
more available locally here although last year it was the GE bulb;
they're all about the same.

Mix and match or use whatever you like. I'd be curious to
hear if anybody is overdriving them with any luck.


--
Richard Sexton | Mercedes Parts: http://parts.mbz.org
http://www.mbz.org Mailing lists: http://lists.mbz.org
W108, W126 Mercedes Classifieds: http://ads.mbz.org

I havent tried them as of yet - I am currently using them on my salt
water tank as supplement to my MH so I opted for some 50/50's. Once I
get the hood redesigned for my planted tank I want to incorporate my
other T-8 ballasts and will consider trying the bulbs you mentioned - of
course I am real slow at doing these things so it may be a while before
I get around to it.

Thanks,
-Dan

Richard Krush wrote:
Dan Milligan writes:

zoomed makes T-8's that will work with that ballast. I am using them now.
Check out:

http://www.zoomed.com/html/lites.html



Thank you for the information! Right now I'm in the process of testing how my
plants will grow with two Philips F32T8 TL850 (5000K color temperature and 86
CRI). I'm also intrigued by two other Philips bulbs, but local hardware
stores didn't seem to have those. One is TL865, which has color temperature
of 6500K and CRI of 86 and the second one is TL950 with 5000K c.t. and CRI of
_98_! The latter especially sounds very promising.

Have you tried any of the above mentioned bulbs or the OCTRON series from
Sylvania?

Richard

Richard Krush wrote:

Thank you for the information! Right now I'm in the process of testing how my
plants will grow with two Philips F32T8 TL850 (5000K color temperature and 86
CRI). I'm also intrigued by two other Philips bulbs, but local hardware
stores didn't seem to have those. One is TL865, which has color temperature
of 6500K and CRI of 86 and the second one is TL950 with 5000K c.t. and CRI of
_98_! The latter especially sounds very promising.

I have 80G tank with four TL950 36W bulbs for half a year or so. Everything
seems right, plants grow well and fishes are healthy. High CRI and 5000K color
temp. make your tank very natural looking also and I like these bulbs because
of it even better. There's one downside, thought, such high CRI bulbs are
usually less efficient than their low-CRI counterparts. The 36W TL(D)950 has
~2300lm output, 36W TL(D)840 (cool white) has ~3000lm. Hagen Sun-GLO 36W bulb
has ~3000lm output and is very noticeably brighter than TL(D)950, so that's
what you get for extra money. Sun-GLO is over 2x higher priced here than
TL(D)950, so I went with latter.

Hope this helps
--

Vallo Kallaste