Well, after playing around with a elbow-joint lamp and a 23 watt compact fluorescent, I decided that ambient light looked really cheesy... like the sun coming in the windows in late afternoon.
But, as I have an Eclipse hood on a 25 gallon tall tank, my options are limited. I raised the back part of the hood, but then that exposes the filter and biowheel to the open air and subsequent evaporation. So I put a 24" glass hood over the top to cover the filter and the open gap above the water. On that, I put the one remaining single tube light from a different hood set on the glass. That adds, more or less, another 15 watts, though it is farther from the water's surface than the main two tubes.
Fingers crossed that this doesn't inspire a sudden algae bloom... it looks really tacky, though. Will try it for awhile and see how the plants respond. Anyone have any other thoughts? Eclipse may make a nice show tank with fully-enclosed filtering, but they weren't designed with the underwater gardener in mind.
But, as I have an Eclipse hood on a 25 gallon tall tank, my options are limited. I raised the back part of the hood, but then that exposes the filter and biowheel to the open air and subsequent evaporation. So I put a 24" glass hood over the top to cover the filter and the open gap above the water. On that, I put the one remaining single tube light from a different hood set on the glass. That adds, more or less, another 15 watts, though it is farther from the water's surface than the main two tubes.
Fingers crossed that this doesn't inspire a sudden algae bloom... it looks really tacky, though. Will try it for awhile and see how the plants respond. Anyone have any other thoughts? Eclipse may make a nice show tank with fully-enclosed filtering, but they weren't designed with the underwater gardener in mind.