Incandescent or Fluorescent?

[Rocketman]

I'm getting a new hood for my 10 Gallon. I may put some live plants in it, maybe not. My options are an Incandescent hood with no lights for 18 bucks or a Fluorescent with a 15 Watt light for $24. The Incandescent hood can take 2 25Watt Lights. However, I've heard they are so hot they evaporate water like mad.

What is the best for possible plant life, (considering it's merely a 10 Gallon, and a 15 Watt Flo Bulb would still be 1.5WPG,) and for heat, price, (of bulbs and operating costs,) etc.

Also, just to make sure, I need to put this hood on a timer.

 

[djlen]

Keep in mind that with the incandescent hood you would have more options in that you can then use it for it's original purpose or you can buy screw in fluorescents for it that will give you added options for wattage.
Len

 

[caffeine]

Do not get the incadescent hood! My roomate has a 10 gal with a 2x 25W incadescent hood and he can't even turn the lights on because it raises the water to well over 85 degrees.

 

[TKOS]

With the incandescent hood you can get 2 mini ballast screw in flourescent bulbs that are 13 watts each so you would have 2.6 watts of light. The quality is still yellower than a full flourescent but works good on low to medium light plants. It is what I use in my tank.

I would agree that the flourescent hood is great as it limits you to low light plants from the beginning. At that rate you might as well build your own top.

 

[mogurnda]

You can get 4100K, which look pretty white to me, at McMaster-Carr.

 

[cpr4cpu]

rocketman, the incandescent hood is not the best choice for the reasons listed, but finding decnet fluorescent bulbs for the hood could also be frustrating. No help huh . . ., well here's my opinion

I use a screw in spiral compact flourescent bulb that I biught at Home Depot for $8. It is advertised as a Daylight bulb. The light output is 19W and the spectrum is 6500K (nice bright white)

Now, heres the complaint, the bulb is larger in diameter so the light had to be raised off the plastic hood, which allowed me to add some cooling space to keep heat in check. The cf bulbs don't get red hot, but the spiral shape is terrible for getting light into the water. If you can get a good reflector to redirect light into the tank your plants will do better, but with a straight foil, paint, or flat reflector plate, you will still only have minimal useable light entering the water, the rest is just reflection or refraction which the plants can't use.

The flourescent bulb hoods aren't much better about getting the light reflected back into the water either, so it's half of one, 6 of the other.

 

[anonapersona]

Walmart

Walmart has some not-spiral screw in flourescent made for the aquarium. It has 2 u-shaped tubes and is more narrow. I used the ones that were spiral, but my daughter found the u tubes

 

[Rocketman]

I think I'll go with Flo.

 

[Hebdizzle]

Rocketman,
I have one of each of the strip lights on my 10 gallon.

One has a 18 " 15 W 6500k bulb. The other is incandescent with 1 AGA 6500K bulb and 1 coralife "freshwater daylight bulb".
I would have boughten another AGA bulb, but the store only had one left. It may just be the stores that I go to... but only 1 store out of 7 had the AGA bulb and 1 had the coralife one. If possible, I would get the AGA bulb, (10 W) because the coralife bulb has a purple tint to it.

Heres what I would choose

1) incandescent with 2 10 watt screw in flourescents
2) flourescent with 2 18" 15W tubes
3) flourescent with 1 18" 15W tube

Aaron

 

[Rocketman]

I think I'm going with number 3.