I am beginning the process of going with live plants for the first time. The light hood I have only accepts the one 18 inch 15 watt fluorescent bulb. Everything I read indicates I probably need more wattage. Any guidance?
I've also got a 20 gallon high, although I'm using it for a Reef tank. I tried retrofitting the original canopy with Power Compacts, but even if you can get a 24" 55 watt bulb to fit, it will most likely overheat the plastic housing and melt it. A 36 watt would fit easily, though, and shouldn't be difficult to cool with a few venting slots cut into the housing. But a single 36w light would still only provide marginally adequate lighting to grow plants with low to medium lighting demands.
I eventually bult a wood canopy and stuck four 18" tubes run by a single 4-F32T8 ballast for a total of 60 watts (3 wpg) and am very pleased. If you're fairly competent with a set of wire strippers and interested in wiring up one of these, shoot me an email at sponjican@oreck.com and I'll walk you through it.
My instinct is always to do it yourself and jury-rig it, hehe, so if you want a straightforward canopy with adequate lighting, just buy one of these:
Looks like I am going to do a DIY with a power compact kit from ahsupply. Looks like the light kit will sit on a glass top. Are these available or is it cheaper to go cut my own. Of course if anyone has any other suggestions about my intentions please let me know. Thanks
The AHsupply kit needs a custom built wood canopy, or an adequately sized housing to mount the bulb, ballast and reflector to.
The $55 strip light on the pet liquidators link I posted is complete and ready to go, including your choice of bulb. They even have a Plant Growth bulb with half red and half white tubes.
Normally, a single 10,000K bulb would be too "blue" for a planted tank since plants also need strong "red" output and a 10,000K bulb has very little red output.
These bulbs are half 10,000K and half red. So you are getting the best of both worlds.
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