Lighting a 55gal, spiral C/F bulbs?

I don't see why it wouldn't work. The only thing is the color temps. I am using those 13W replacements for 60W incandescent in every ceiling fan in my house. They light the rooms up much brighter than before. If you used 6 of those bulbs, it would be extremely bright in your tank, especially if you had a decent reflector.

I did a quick search on google, and I couldn’t find too much above the 6000K range:

http://www.bulbamerica.com/Compact-...light-Light-Bulb-934-prod.htm?category_id=400

If you could figure out a reflector, ballast, etc for the following type of bulb you might be in business:

http://www.bulbamerica.com/Compact-...-865-Light-Bulb-1254-prod.htm?category_id=437

Good luck and if you decide to try this I would love to know the outcome. I have thought of trying something on a large scale like a 125 G with a homemade reflector built into the canopy using mirrors and angled pieces of wood surrounding the lights. I don’t think it would be that hard, but the fixtures might be the show stopper.

just get one of these - it can't be any worse than what you're planning :icon_roll

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120169535139

this seller honors emailed requests to replace the blue bulb with a second white one for free.

look at my 10g crayfish tank. there I managed with a 30w 6500k spiral bulb, bulb socket and wire, and a reflector cone for around $25 shipped, so there is no way I could do something similar with a 4' long tank for less than $75-$100, and I would still need to make a 10" high hood enclosure with a fan, only to not have enough light penetration to get through 18" of water.

that spiral bulb idea you are proposing is silly as you would mostly light up the long glass sides of your tank thus creating a GDA nightmare.

for a 4' long tank, you can either build a hood (that won't be free and will probably look like crap) and use a 4' T5HO kit (endcap ballast bulbs reflector wiring) costing well over $120 shipped , or take your chances on that pretty finished Chinese fixture for only $70 shipped; which everyone alleges has inferior ballast and bulbs, there in lies the risk of buying one. the same seller has a 4 bulb unit for $100, but I suspect the bulbs are too close together to offer much reflector efficiency.

ingg said:

Just an FYI, you can't mount spiral cfl upside down. Read the fine print,
they'll burn out, it is a hazard. Even flat is iffy, depends on the bulb.

Click to expand...

that's weird... I've got a house full of high hats and all the spirals are socket
side up. perhaps the warning you saw pertained to a specific brand of bulb.
oh, and our electrical contracting company mounts THOUSENDS of such bulbs
both horizontally and socket side up. Please link us to this so called hazard.

Good new everyone, that ebaY seller got back to me with the measurements between each tube.
it seems the 2 bulb units have 1/2" distance, while the 4 bulb units only have 3/16" distance, so the
4 bulb fixtures are clearly narrower than they should be, and probably suffer from wasteful restrike.