Anyway to increase lighting?

Those are called Incandescent bulbs. They tend to give off more heat than light, and as you've found out, aren't enough in most cases. I believe they make hoods with a Flourescent bulb instead of two incands., and that would certainly be a small upgrade. Though, normal flouros have a wattage restriction based on their length. For example, an 18 inch flouro (I assume that's what fits on a 10g hood) would be only 18Watts or so.

The other option, and one I'm currently using right now, are bulbs called Spiral Compact bulbs or Mini Compact bulbs (http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Product/Prod_Display.cfm?pcatid=9870&ref=3532&subref=AY&N=2004+113346). I bought one from home depot to fit in my 5gal hood which is rated for 10W. It was listed as a 9W bulb, and said it 'effectively replaces 40W incandescent bulbs'. Price was about $3.50, but there was no listed color spectrum, just "Warm White Light" which I assume means a bit less than 10K and closer to real sunlight. It looks quite nice, and gives all my plants a nice green glow.

Hope this isn't confusing!

- Marty

The mini compacts in the link given by Superior are for aquaria and generally fit in the fixtures for smaller aquaria that come with incandescent lights. I've also seen these replacement compact fluorescents at Wal-mart in the fish section. If you replace your two lamps with two of these, you'll double your lihgt output while halving your electrical use and heat output.

Ugh, warm white is more yellow than white. The incan. PC bulb you want is "Daylight", Home Depot carries Sylvania daylight PC. I can't remember the price, but it was very reasonable. Probably much less in your area anyway, everything is more pricey around here.

Can you use these since they're plug ins?

Nothing wrong with them, but they're tough to find to fit a 10 g tank, and the 4 ft. ones would look a little odd, no?

How about placing 2 10G side by side? That's what I'm planning on doing. Only thing is that I'm stummped on what types of bulbs I can get from Home Depot. They're dirt cheap. But I know you guys say daylight bulbs, but the ones I see aren't in the 6000K + range. They're usually less, around 3000K - 4500K. Unless I'm not finding the right ones.

:sad:

IMO, the BEST cheap light for plants is the Sylvania GRO-LUX bulb. great spectrum for plants and cheap, if you can find them. the GE are decent, but not as good for plants (spectrum wise) as the Sylvania GRO-LUX.

they are worth hunting around for... dunno if home depot carries those or not, but some hardware chains do.



edit: just realized that the original poster was discussing CF's and incandescent... the GRO-LUX is a standard flourescent. (T8?)

Warm light fluorescents are rated between 3,000k-4,000k.

The benefits of the Gro-Lux bulbs compared to daylight or even warm light bulbs are minimal if not debatable. It looks good on paper, with the Gro-Lux having more of a red shift, but in practice the difference isn't noticeable.

Top priority in choosing a light source is how it looks to you.

So if you had to choose from Daylight or GrowLux... Which one would you choose? Wouldn't the Daylights run around 5000K - 6500K or something? Or couldn't you get a GrowLux and a Daylight all together? Wouldn't that give you a bit of both worlds?