I am building a hood for my 10 gallon tank and I have a question about lighting. I am going to put screw in cfl bulbs I have 2 6500k 23watt bulbs they are equivalent to a 100 watt bulb would 2 of them be way too much light for a heavily planted tank?

I use two-15 watt 6500k cfl bulbs in my 10 gallon and have only recently defeated some serious algae that almost killed the whole tank. I think two-23 awry bulbs would be hard to manage unless you were dosing co2, and had a VERY limited photo period. Even though cfl bulbs aren't very efficient, that is still a lot of very close light you're going with.

I am planning on doing DIY Co2 to start and dosing flourish excel

In that case, I would just give it a try. If you find the light levels make it unmanagable you can always swap the bulbs out. Walmart has the 6500k 15 watt bulbs, and you can even get 9 watt cfl bulbs at the petco. post pics when it is operational. Mine was also a DIY 10 gallon hood, but my tank is low tech, low bioload, mineralized topsoil and thats it.

I'm almost finished building my 10g a hood. I am going to use two of the light setups from the cheapo walmart kits. They are double sided sockets so they hold two bulbs each. I think my bulbs are 14w, so I'll be looking at 56w of light total. I just started using DIY Co2, and I can see a huge difference already. Growth is increased and the color is soooooo much better. I just can't wait until this hood is done and on the tank with double the light to see what happens. You have any pictures of your hood? I'll post some when mine is finished.

I will post pics when I am done I cut all the material this morning gonna assemble it in the morning

Got the hood built and installed. Would post pics but am on an iPhone. Later when I get the tapatalk app I will add pics.

Have u considered playing around with LED's?

I am experimenting with the 10W chinese LED's u find on Ebay, and they are pretty darn good if u have a nice heat sink..

Here are not very good pics of the hood. Gonna build one for my wife's 55 using 6 bulbs.

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