Somewhat unusual Lighting question

[nathanieltolb33]

Hello, first time post for me, and I'm sure they cover this somewhere, but I haven't had time to look. I was looking at a 110 watt compact flourescent fixture today at the petstore for my 46 gallon aquarium to help wih growing plants. I know that 110 watts is only 2.4 watts per gallon, but my question has nothing to do with the wpg. I am actually curious if there is a formula to indicate increase in water temperature when going to a cf lamp over a normal flourescent lamp. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Nathan

 

[VTwinFanatic]

I havent noticed a big water temp change when using CFs. I have used them w/ and w/o glass tops and havent seen a noticable difference. And I just recently purchased a 24g nano and the lights are practically touching the water...with a plastic shield between them and the water and still havent noticed much of a change...others might say something different but IME i havent seen a difference.

 

[Walker_]

Welcome to AC! Great to have new people getting interested! I am not aware of any, and I think the problem with trying to make one would simply be the fact there are too many variables; IE how much heat does one bulb put out over another manufacturers bulb/ how efficient is the ballast, what agents are used to coat the tube, what is the surface area of the water, how thick is the glass, how is it filtered, what is the ambient air temp, what is the relative humidity, how far above the tank is the bulb, how dirty is the water etc… etc… etc…
If its a 46 gal tank and a 110W CF I highly doubt you are going to have any trouble with heat. Remember that a CF bulb is the exact same as a VHO bulb, its just curled into a much smaller space; best thing to do is run it and watch the temp. In my experience you really only need to start worrying about temp when you are dealing with HID bulbs like metal halide (I have 2x 400W MH bulbs on my 90gal, and that DOES cause a heat issue) the other thing to do is lower the setting on your heater, so at night the temp drops more and during the day if it IS heating the water (which I doubt it will be doing) it will spike at a lower temp…

 

[nathanieltolb33]

Thanks for the reply

Thanks for the help, I appreciate it. Maintaining an aquarium seem so much more difficult than when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I didn't know anything about water changes and I never had any problems with various different chemical levels in the tank. At least, that I knew of. Every day is a new and unusual experience with this new aquarium. Like finding out that the powerhead filter that I had was sucking fish into a small hole on the back of the device and killing them, or that my Nitrites is always at 0, but I can't seem to get my Nitrates under 20ppm. Anyways, thank you so much for all the help. Whenever I have a question or an issue, I always come here and find that someone else has encountered it as well, and with the knowledge of everyone here, a solution is always found.