Lighting question

[Anthonysafricans]

Hey yall just starting up my fish room and im on a budget. I was thinking plug in ballist from homedepot but im not very good with watts and kelvin to knoe which would be best..the fish are african cichlids and eventuslly corald n marine. 48" florecent tubes would work?

 

[meegosh]

If I read that right, you want to go saltwater and do corals at some point? You would be fine with some cheap T8 or T12 shop lights for a cichlid tank. I got a 2bulb fixture over my 75g tank. Haven't tried live plants with it but I'd expect some low light types to do fine.

If you want to go corals later though you will need to upgrade your fixture.

 

[Anthonysafricans]

Yes eventuslly I will upgrade then but since im on a budget...im thinking homedepot for strip florecent lights....any advise therr? N I want lights that will really show offf there color since I will be posting pix of them n selling them

 

[meegosh]

I got a 4 foot 2 bulb fixture for ~$12. I had some 10000k bulbs at home that I put in, gave off plenty of light and didn't wash the colors of the fish out.

I got something similar to this:

http://www.homedepot.com/Lighting-F...Id=10053&langId=-1&storeId=10051#.UPQVrKyyvKo

It was Utilitech brand and was from Lowes.

 

[Anthonysafricans]

Awsome thku....since im gettong my rack together n my fish room stuff was looking to just run one fixture over the tanks