what lighting do you recommend?

[asa]

starting with a 46 gal bowfront glass tank.
want to create planted tank and fish (of course...haven't decided).

what type of lighting do you recommend?
what brands?
etc.

got some idea from the local pet shops...but would like to hear from the crowd.

mahalo from hawaii.

 

[BigJim]

What kind of plants do you want to grow? That will dictate your lighting choices a bit.

Check out T5HO lights. They're powerful and efficient. I'd run a single ColorMax type bulb and fill the rest of the fixture with 6700K bulbs. If you want to stick with low-light plants, still get at least a two-bulb fixture. You can always run the fixture half empty.

 

[asa]

thanks.
what brands do you like?

 

[BigJim]

Can't say I really have a favorite brand. I just started looking for a 24" fixture for a tank for my wife. The Hagen GLO fixtures look decent for a good price. Coralife is another popular brand.

 

[Crepe]

I use the Hagen GLO, they are pretty bright (blindingly so). I got them and two T5 HO 24watt 24" bulbs totaling to only about 130dollars at my LFS. The nice thing about the Hagen is that they don't use specialized bulbs like the coralife any T5HO 3/8" tube will work.

They also make Hagen 36" for fixtures your size, the bulbs however, are harder to find.

 

[asa]

tks guys.

 

[SnailPowered]

I was looking for lights and you may want to look into a topdogsellers on eBay. They have 2 bulb set ups with T5HOs for about $40 and 4 bulbs for $100. I have never purchased from them but they are very inexpensive. I haven't found anyone here that has tried them either but most people have said that they look decent.

 

[shinji]

topdogsellers

Hi, I am also interested in and thinking to purchase T5 fixture from the topdogsellers on ebay. Can anybody give us feedbacks please? Thanks!!

 

[cmor1701d]

It states "Highly polished reflector", not highly polished individual parabolic reflectors.

With T5 the power is in the reflector. Beacuse the bulbs are so small you can use individual parabolic reflectors that put 99% of the light output down into the tank.

These might be fine for FW/planted but not for a reef setup.

 

[SnailPowered]

Ahhh, ok. Thank you for clearing that up cmor! I plan on having a FW/planted tank so I will try them out in about 6 months and make sure I post a review on here since I can't seem to find anyone that has tried them.