Want to set up low-light 10 gallon with electronic ballast.

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strawtarget

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
May 7, 2007
Messages
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I'm setting up a 10 gallon aquarium for some black neon tetras and panda cory catfish. I'm using fake plants and do not require/desire an ultra-bright lighting system. I don't want to use incandescent because of the heat, and I don't want to use a normal cheapo 10 gallon light strip because the tank sits in my peripheral vision all day long and an electromagnetic ballast will flicker me into a daily headache.

I see 2 possible paths ahead of me.

1. Buy a mega-cheapo incandescent light strip and use 2 mini compact fluorescent bulbs in it. The problem with this is that all of the mini CFL's I've found are 10 watt and 10,000K: too bright (since 2 bulbs go in a light strip) and too blue (I want closer to 5,000K).

2. Rig up a complete-DIY solution.

Anyone familiar with this stuff have any advice for me? Thanks!!
 
Get a fixture/hood that takes 2 incandescents, replace those w/ 2 Coralife 6700K screw in PCs. Then, when you're sick of scraping algae off of plastic plants, you can grow real ones.
 
I have a 15 lighted with 2, 11 watt, 6400k CF bulbs I picked up at the dollar store. Works great; I wanted some algae on the rocks as the tank houses 3 Pseudeotropheus flavus.
 
I picked up an incandescent light strip and fitted it with the lowest-wattage ~5100K compact fluorescent lamps I could find locally: 4 watts. The "equivalent" wattage is labeled as 15. It's pretty bright, so I've covered about 70% of the glass below the light strip with white cardboard. That seems to do the trick. If I had it to do over again, I think I'd order some 2 watt CFL's from the internet instead.
 
BillD said:
I have a 15 lighted with 2, 11 watt, 6400k CF bulbs I picked up at the dollar store. Works great; I wanted some algae on the rocks as the tank houses 3 Pseudeotropheus flavus.

Dollarama, right? I've got 8 of those bulbs in each of my hoods on my two 30 gallons. The plants went nuts.
 
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