Lighting

[brndfrb]

I am going to do salt water and right now i have a 36'' florescent light you know the one that comes with the tank. I am not trying to spend hundreds of dollars on a light so the guy at my [acronym:cc41c5308d="Local Fish Store"]lfs[/acronym:cc41c5308d] told me to buy a double hood and keep my single and use two actinic white and one actinic blue bulg. well the double hood is like 130 dollars. what can i do to save some money?? Please help me

[justDIY]

I'm assuming the "double hood" is a canopy that holds two strip lights, and each strip hold two bulbs?

Are these normal output bulbs, called NO? With four bulbs that would be 120 watts of "standard" lighting ... how big is your tank, that may not be enough depending on what you want to grow.

Right now compact fluorescent seems to be the most cost effective method of lighting.

With 36" tank, you can use 96 watt compact fluorescents, but you will need to build a hood to hold them - the parts and bulbs to build a two lamp fixture should run you around $150

www.hellolights.com seems to be seriously competing in the [acronym:383b2adf0a="Do it yourself"]DIY[/acronym:383b2adf0a] market right now, offering complete pre-fab fixtures witih bulbs for only $20-30 more than buying just parts and building your own fixture.

Check out:

http://www.hellolights.com/362xcoraqpch.html

-----

A lot of what I've read seems to indicate that [acronym:383b2adf0a="Power compact fluorescent"]PC[/acronym:383b2adf0a] lighting is not the best for saltwater because it's colors aren't as pure as bulbs like [acronym:383b2adf0a="Very high output fluorescent"]VHO[/acronym:383b2adf0a] or Metal Halide... but if price is the main concern, appearences might need to take a back seat until you can afford an upgrade.

One advantage of building your own hood is you can leave room to include a metal halide bulb in the future, and just run fluorescent actinic bulbs.

[ReefRaff]

I got my twin tube strip light from this place http://www.aquatictech.com/ for like 87.00 dollers