poor man's lighting setup

[thartley]

I may have come across a way to provide a decent amount of light for a bargain basement price for smaller tanks such as quarantine tanks. Please don't flame me. I consider the suggestion to be kind of a temporary method since it isn't the cleanest approach, but it does get you 1.9 watts of light per gallon for a 10 gallon tank for under $20.

I found a 19 watt compact fluorescent spiral lamp at Home Depot for $8. It is manufactured by Commercial Electric and is called a Daylight lamp. Supposedly the light output from the 19 watts is equivalent to a 75 watt incandescent bulb. The packaging has a blue background instead of the green that seems to be the color of choice for the other products. The best thing about it is that the packaging actually lists the lamp's temperature to be 6500K. The lamp screws into a normal incandescent bulb socket.

I had an old swing-arm lamp laying around, so I mounted it to the fish tank stand and adjusted it so it is over the center of the tank. It really lights it up. My quarantine tank doesn't have a hood. A glass hood would work for this setup, but probably not a black plastic hood.

If you don't have a swing-arm lamp, check out Staples or Office Depot. I haven't checked Office Max in person, but their web site doesn't show that they carry a swing-arm lamp. To see a picture of the type of lamp I'm talking about, go the the Office Depot web site and look for a swing-arm task lamp manufactured by Enlite. It costs $10.

This approach could be used by those interested in getting started with planted tanks but are still saving their money to get a true aquarium style compact fluorescent setup. When they finally get the compact fluorescent aquarium lights, they can then use the swing-arm light for something else.

The drawback to this approach is that the light is not evenly distributed across the tank the way a normal fluorescent tube would distribute it. It tends to be concentrated where ever you have the lamp aimed.

My main concern is that the lamp may slowly lower itself into the tank and short out. I plan on taking a piece of a wire coat hanger and setting it across the top of the aquarium so that in the event that the light does slip down towards the water, the lamp's reflector will come into contact with the coat hanger wire and the coat hanger wire will prevent the light from reaching the water.

Sorry for the length of this posting.

 

[nyghtone]

Hey, this is actually a good post. There are a lot of younger kids that try to get into this hobby and can't afford the expensive lights, stands, etc. I always incourage them to do what they can, I even know one 16 year old kid on here with a saltwater tank, pretty impressive if you ask me!!!!

I currently have a similiar setup on my 75 gal SW tank. I have two shop light strips from Lowe's hardware that were 10 bucks a piece, and 2 6500K bulbs that were super daylights or something from Lowe's for 5 bucks apiece. I actually shelled out the money and got a good actinic and 10000K bulb to compliment them. This give me like 160 watts of light, which is way better than the standard 32 watt strip light that came with the tank!!!!

I plan on upgrading this setup to a 4X110W VHO setup, so I can keep corals, but in the meantime this lights my FOWLR nicely. It would probalby be more than enough for a FW planted setup too. But I don't know much about planted FW tanks, so who knows.

Thanks, Joshua...

 

[Robert H]

The problem is you want 2 to 3 watts of FLOURESCENT light per gallon of water, not incadescent. Incadecents are several times WEAKER than a Flourescent. This is why a 19 watt flourescent can be equavilant to a 75 watt incadescent. So, you would need enough 19 watt bulbs to equal 2 to 3 watts per gallon of water. So , yes on a ten gallon tank, that would give you 1.9 watts per gallon. If you are happy with that then no problem. You may be able to find slightly higher wattage screw in CFs

BTW, Josh, I like your cat flash...what the F??

Robert Hudson
www.aquabotanic.com

 

[Guest]

19 watts on a 10 gallon tank is a low light tank no matter how you figure it. Besides the standard fluorescent strip light that comes with a 10 gallon tank has a 15 watt bulb in it.

The spiral bulbs have a huge amount of re-strike and you are lucky if you get 50% efficiency out of them.

 

[dud]

What is a re-strike? Is it like going on and off continuously but fast enough that we cannot tell it?

 

[malkore]

No re-strike is light from the bulb hitting part of the bulb.
Due to the spiral nature of the bulb...the top of the spiral emits light which hits every level of the spiral below it...which is called re-strike. When you have re-strike, that part of the light is lost.
Spiral screw-in PC's have more restrike than the U-shaped screw-in's...but those are typically 13 watts at most.

If you added 2 more desklamps and 2 more of those bulbs, you'd have a better light dispersal and you'd be able to move into the moderate level of lighting.

 

[dud]

Learned something new! So I guess in reality the given wattage of spiral (or any) fluorescent lights just indicate how much electricity they consume, but not how bright they actually are? Hmmm, never thought about that.

So, strictly speaking, it's not entirely accurate to state one's tank's light level by wattage , but you have to refer to lumens? Am I right?

 

[Guest]

Not really. We base watts on T-12 or T-8 fluorescent bulbs with basic reflectors. Reflector design also makes a huge difference as does the shape of the bulb.

But here is a good example. Many people place 4' shop lights over their 55 gallon tank. They feel that with two shop lights they are getting 160 watts of light into the tank. Well it's not really true. They have 160 watts of light OVER the tank. How much gets into the tank is a different story. Take those two shop lights and hang them from the ceiling of a pitch black 10'X10' room. They will provide enough light to perform most tasks in that room. Now take a 2x55 watt kit from AH Supply and hang it at the same height. You will have a very dark room with a very bright spot under the light. I feel that a 2x55 watt kit from AH Supply actually give much more usable light in a 55 gallon tank than does 160 watts of shop light with their well designed light diffusers.

 

[dud]

Thanks, Malkore and Rex!