55 Gallon lighting

[Chafire]

Hello All,

I recently bought a 55 gallon aquarium which I plan on setting up in the near future as a planted tank with fish and am just working on getting the setup ready. The hood for the tank are two single 18" bulbs opposed to a single or double 48" fixture. I plan on shooting for 2 to 3 watts per gallon, so I will need anywhere between 110- 165 watts. I am wondering if anyone knows of some very high watt 18" bulbs with 6000K or maybe a little higher. I did some looking and the highest ones I could find are these:
Aquarium Lighting - Lamps/Bulbs - Power Compact Lamps - 40 Watt (18 Inch) SunPaq Dual Actinic Power Compact Lamp : Aquariumpros.com

They give off 40 watts each, which only comes out to 1.6WPG.

My other thought is that underneath each hood there are 18" bulbs but the hood itself is a little over 22" in length so what if I extended the sockets so they could fit 22" bulbs like these:
Aquarium Lighting - Lamps/Bulbs - Power Compact Lamps - 65 Watt (22 Inch) SunPaq 460nm Actinic Power Compact Lamp : Aquariumpros.com

Which give off 65 watts each, giving me 2.6WPG.

But heres the other thing I notice in the pictures of the bulbs that they have four prongs on just one end opposed to normal flourescents which have two. Also I noticed that the sunpaqs only have a socket attachment on one end.

I guess I'm wondering if anyone else has had to re-light a 55 gallon in the same fashion that I'm trying or if anyone has used the Sunpaq bulbs and know what I may need to set them up underneath the hoods? I'm trying to avoid having to build my own hood and would love to just adjust the current setup.

Any info would be helpful.

Thanks,
~Graham
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[mfdrookie516]

if there are only pins on one side, theyre probably power compacts. the ballasts in your fixtures will not handle a bulb of any more wattage than what they have in them, probably 15w bulbs... what you need to do is invest in a fixture. just a 48" current nova extreme t5ho would be perfect and has alo of options for how many bulbs, etc. i think you can get a 2x54w which would give you close to 2wpg, or a 4x54w with an actinic bulb and 3 daylight bulbs would give you around 3wpg. Regardless of what you do, you wont get more than 15w each on the fixtures you have