a few questions about lighting!!!

[fish-4-life]

1. can any light fit into any hood? or does every tank hood have a required light?

2. what light should i get for a 55 gallon aquarium. i dont know what live plants i want.

3. any recommendations?

4. do you ever need to replace anything on the lights. is it just a one time buy and then nothing. but i think u need to change bulbs, right?

5. does every light have its own required bulb? or can you put any light bulb of the right wattage?

 

[fort384]

You can retrofit many different lighting packages into different hoods. Most lights you buy off the shelf will be stand alone units. Again, the type of light depends on your budget, and how involved you want your planted tank to be. Fixtures generally hold one kind of bulb... you can't take an 18" 15W fixture for a T8 and jam a 28W T5 bulb in there, if that is what you mean.

Yes, florescent bulbs have to be replaced every year to 18 months or so. MH, CF, and LED bulbs last longer.

 

[BigJim]

1. No. You obviously can't put a 48" bulb in a 24" hood, but there are more subtle problems too. If you retrofit a bunch of T5HO bulbs or high-power LEDs into a small, cheap plastic hood, you'll melt the hood or burn out the bulbs from excessive heat.

2. You really need to decide what type of plants you want before we can recommend lighting. If you want a simple low-light setup, a pair of 48" T8 bulbs should suffice. If you want to be able to grow a better variety of plants, step up to a 2-bulb 48" T5HO fixture. If you want a fancy high-light planted tank with CO2 and the works, look at a 4-bulb 48" T5HO fixture, a high-power LED fixture, or even MH.

4. Bulbs lose their efficiency and eventually burn out. You may need to replace starters and ballasts eventually.

5. Incandescent fixtures are flexible. You can put different wattage bulbs in the socket and they'll work. Fluorescent fixtures are a different animal. Fluorescent bulbs need to be connected at both ends and they have different pin spacing based on diameter. These create physical problems when trying to interchange bulbs from one fixture to another.

On top of that, fluorescent lights require a ballast to fire and different ballasts are capable of different things. A T5 ballast won't fire a T5HO bulb very well. A T5HO ballast will fire a T5 bulb, but it'll overdrive it, producing more light and killing the bulb faster. A T5 ballast for a 24" bulb probably won't fire a 48" bulb. It's best to match the ballast to the bulb unless you really know what you're doing.

If you've to a 48" T5HO fixture, any 48" T5HO bulb should fit.