lights????

[azriel]

im moving my 20 high to a 20 long... i figure better surface area and not as much depth will be better... right?! so anyways... i can get two 30" striplights for pretty cheap with a powerglo bulb and a marineglo bulb (hagen bulbs) but im not sure if that will be enough light for the mushrooms and condylactis(sp??) anemone i want. what do you guys think?? i could get compact flourescent lights or something else but im on a tight budget adn the regular striplights are practically free. any opinions GREATLY appreciated.

[Boogiechillin]

Well, I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't keep anemones under striplights, but a handful of people have been successful doing so with condy anemones. At the very least, you will need to feed the anemone a reliable 3x per week to make sure that it receives enough sustenance to keep going. Mushrooms will likely survive under that lighting, but I wouldn't expect much in terms of spread or rapid growth. Get better lighting as soon as you can afford it.

[azriel]

thanx for the reply. any good opinions on which power compacts are reasonably priced, user friendly, and reliable??? if im gonna spend the money on them i want to know im gettign something that will work well adn not frustrate me to no end. heehee. most of the stores around here stock coralife adn seem to suggest that over all-glass or oceanic. any info would be greatly appreciated.

[VoodooChild]

I'm picking up the Coral Life EZ Ballast on Thursday. I also have a Power Glo and a Marine Glo running over my tank, 24" and 36" inches. I assume your bulbs are 24". I don't think they make 30"
bulbs, and if they do, please tell me where you got them! Anyways, I did have the quad light 96w 20 inch Coral Life PC fixture, but I'm going to return it. I couldn't fit any other strip lights on there, where I can still keep my 30 w while still have the PC. That's $150 for 96 w as compared to $80 (with my employee discount) for 85 w. I'll tell you how I do. I have some mushrooms too. Right now they seem to be doing fine under 50 w of light, but it's only been 5 days. I'll see if this helps them out at all.

[BrianH]

I'm currently running 2 2X96 watt retro kits over my 50 gal reef. One is from hellolights.com and the other is a CSL. There is no difference on the quality of light produced. The difference I see is the amenities. The hellolights set up is 2 separate ballasts with no on/off switches. The CSL ballasts are in 1 enclosure with a seperate on/off switch for each ballast. The other difference is price. I paid $200 for the hellolights kit (including bulbs, reflector, ballasts & quick connect wiriing), I bought the CSL kit used, but I'm sure it would have been much more than $200. One other point, the water proof endcap on one of my CSL kits is beginning to separate. This may be due to the fact that I bought it used.

I also have a 2 X 55 watt CF fixture by AGA that I ran over my old planted tank. I never had a problem with this fixture either.

Brian

[tubbanorman]

I just bought a Custom Sealife smart light fixture with bulbs from Big Als online and it was $114 w/2-65W bulbs. Very good deal to me. Hellolights has similar units for about the same price. They also have good prices on the smaller lifgts and Coral life lite stips.