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Two different questions

547 Views 2 Replies 2 Participants Last post by  chrisnif, 
C
First question, 5 gallon eclipse hex which is 15" tall, I have a clip on light with spiral CFL 13 watt. Water is only 50" of the 15" depth, I'm growing a plant at the top of the tank (ivy up and over the rim, from a half pot attached to the back wall). Anyway can I get anything to grow under that light (I could get as high as a 26 watt easily). I was just thinking java fern/ and a type of moss. Let me know about that.

Secondly, I think I may have found an inexpensive way to light my 56 gallon tank, and it may help some of you guys out. Walmart has a 24" "undercabinet light" It is T5NO, 14w I think. It can be mounted two ways, and has an acrylic guard. Not sure how well it could handle the dampness, but it'd be worth a shot. If you mount the fixture one way, you can pack quite a few of them into a hood (I'd bet I could get 10 of them above my 18" deep tank) and you can daisy chain 5 off a single plug. Only downfall, no reflector. I have a 2xt8 fixture I was going to push to the rear of the tank (I have rocks along the back wall, and vals that are tall, so I don't need the light there very much) and I was going to put 3 of the T5NOs (1 towards the middle and 2 towards the front). Oh another bad deal is it comes with 4200k bulbs, but replacements won't be too hard to come by.

So lighting gurus (er Hoppy) what kind of light will 3 T5NOs about 26" from the substrate give me, I doubt the pair of T8s count for much, probably just "fish viewing" and let the T5s grow the plants.

Thanks in advance on both questions.
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H
If that clip on light has a good reflector (if you look at the bulb, can you see a good reflection of each side of the bulb in the reflector?) you could get plenty of light with a 23-25 watt bulb, but possibly not enough with the 13 watt one.

The T5NO lights, made for kitchen and bathroom use, with no reflector, may be barely better than T8 lights. But, I have no data on them, so I'm just guessing. If a typical T5 reflector increases the light output by a factor of 2.5, which is a reasonable guess, then those 3 could give you barely enough to grow low light plants. (That's another guess.)
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C
The clip light is one of those goose neck lights, no refelctor, just white painted. I'm just looking to grow java fern (clippings from my main tank) so I'll get the 26w bulb, and see how it goes.

As far as the T5NOs, I would have to think they would be at least as good as the coralife T5NO because those cover 3/4 the bulb and dont really have any reflector, this allows 270 degrees of light from the bulb, so some of the nondirected light can at least bounce off the white hood.
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