[AquaticLife] Turning On The Light?
Where have you been the past couple of days? We’ve been discussing CFL’s…. well sort of… in the “Wa$ted” thread.
Yes for small tanks that often come with one or two screw in fixtures for tubular incandescent bulbs, the CFL’s of similar shape work great but will increase the lighting quite a bit. I have a 10G tank that I got as a kit that has the hood with two incandescent bulbs. The largest incandescent tubular bulbs it can handle are 7.5W on each side as the hood is plastic and anything stronger than 7.5W puts out too much heat and started to melt the hood… yes, that means I tried to upgrade the lighting. LOL With the two 7.5W bulbs, that gave the tank 1.5 watts per gallon. With CFL’s, which are only rated at 25W but put out light comparable to 60W bulbs, two of them would be comparable to 120W of lighting on a 10G tank… or 12 watts per gallon.
The other consideration for switching to a single CFL instead of two incandescent bulbs (leave a burned out incandescent bulb in the extra socket to keep moisture from corroding the socket) would be the heat factor. The heat from the two 7.5W bulbs would actually heat up the water when the lights were on and then when they were off, the water would cool down… unless there was an aquarium heater to keep it more stabile. This tank kit did not have a clear shield between the bulbs and the surface air of the tank. I tried putting a piece of plexiglass on the tank and then the hood on top of it but the heat from even the 7.5W bulbs quickly started to melt the plexiglass and the hood also… so there has to be this free air space, which means the lights will heat up the water.
There are also hoods designed strictly for CFL’s that have plug in ends on the bulbs with four prongs. There are several kinds of designs for CFL’s to be used in different sockets.
Lenny Vasbinder Fish Blog - http://GoldLenny.blogspot.com (Links to any articles referenced in above reply are listed on the right side, alphabetically under Labels and also under Archives by Year, Month)
Category: Philippines Internet Koi Society
