ya so I have been looking at different lights for my 72g bowfront, I am not buying a 300 dollar hood lamp, can I use a regular ace,home depot, menards al cheap-o lamp, if so, who has what, and what bulbs, for how much?
hood light
- Thread starter ryknier
- Start date
well, first, do you plan on putting live plants in the tank?? If so you are going to need a good amount of light. If not you can simply buy a strip light to put on the tank. I am not sure the dementions of your tank but you can look here on bigalsonline and see what lights they have. Here is the link to their flourescent strip lights: http://www.bigalsonline.com/catalog/category.xml?pcid1=1843;category_id=1853
Hopefully this is of some help.
Hopefully this is of some help.
I think I am going to establish fish first and then get into plants slowly, so ya I will be getting plants, just off hand I believe its 48" should I look into a double bulb or triple, maybe 2 double lights
well how many watts is the bulb? To grow plants you usually need at least 1.5 watts of light per gallon. So for your 72 gallon tank you would need roughly 110 watts of light to grow low light plants. For plants that require more light you would need more like 2 to 3 watts per gallon so that would be like 140 to 200 watts. Hopefully some of the more experienced members will look at this and respond as well, as I am fairly new to the hobby and to plants myself.
Fixtures at the LFS are expensive, but easy; they're made to fit the tank, and you don't have to do any work. If you're a do-it-yourselfer and you want to put some elbow grease into it, you can save a lot of money.
You can get shop lights at Home Depot - they're 1, 2 or possibly more tube 48" strip lights - and you can also purchase bulbs there. It's not the most attractive setup unless you can build a bit of a hood around the light fixture, but it will work. You could also purchase ballasts, end caps, wood, wire etc. at Home Depot and build your own hood - there are lots of plans available online, just Google 'DIY aquarium hood' or something similar.
If you're planning to keep high-light plants you may want to look into compact fluorescents - they give off more light than regular tubes and work really well for plants (but they're not cheap).
You can get shop lights at Home Depot - they're 1, 2 or possibly more tube 48" strip lights - and you can also purchase bulbs there. It's not the most attractive setup unless you can build a bit of a hood around the light fixture, but it will work. You could also purchase ballasts, end caps, wood, wire etc. at Home Depot and build your own hood - there are lots of plans available online, just Google 'DIY aquarium hood' or something similar.
If you're planning to keep high-light plants you may want to look into compact fluorescents - they give off more light than regular tubes and work really well for plants (but they're not cheap).
ya I bought a 4 foot hanging shop light that I am converting to set on top of the aquarium, I got it for 7 bucks at Home Depot, I also got 2 Phillips Natural Sunshine light,
Light Output 2950 Lumens
Color Temperature 5000K
Should I get a 6000k light, I might be getting into plants, or what type of Temp bulb should I get for plants?
Light Output 2950 Lumens
Color Temperature 5000K
Should I get a 6000k light, I might be getting into plants, or what type of Temp bulb should I get for plants?
They should be happy under 5000K. If you want to mix 5000K with 6000K that will also work - go for 'daylight' and/or 'broad spectrum' bulbs, rather than very low or very high K bulbs that stress one end of the spectrum. Plants need blue and red light. They're very forgiving, you don't have to worry too much about K as long as they're getting sufficient light.