CSL 96w retros arrived!

[fishfreek]

I put my new 96w pc retro smartlite in my 45g reef yesterday. WOW!!, what a difference from my 55w NO i had in there. I am very happy with the overall appearence. I also kept one of my actinic bulbs in the hood, it adds just a touch more blue. I was going to add 2x96w at first but wanted to see how the apperance of the lights would look. I plan to add another fixture in a few months.
Just thought i would share with you guys that were intersted in these retros from my last post.

 

[mark-24]

Sweet, how much did you pay for it?
So are you keeping your 55w fixture in their? You could run your old 55w fixture, and the new 96w retro, so you would then get 151w. That would be a great amount of light, have one 50/50, and one actintic bulb. 151w is a really good, but in a 45 gallon tank, heat could become an issue. You could start keeping some nice sps, lps, acros, brain, just about any thing. That would be sweet, keep us updated.
-Mark
[ October 28, 2001: Message edited by: Mark-24 ]

 

[fishfreek]

I only paid $91 with shipping for the whole set up!! Sweet deal in my opinion! As for my existing NO bulbs, (2-20w & 1-15w)i decided to only keep one 20w actinic. The old fixture was 5-1/2" wide (home depot fixture)& only 24" long, this seemed to be a waste of space, IMO. I have the 20w in an old single hood fixture wich is only 3-1/4" wide. This way i can keep my NO light in the back of the tank and the new pc almost centered over the tank(front to back). Pcs are about 5" above the water now. I'm thinking of maybe lowering them so they are about 3" above water so there isn't so much light bouncing around in the canopy. What do you think? My only concern is that i don't keep glass over the tank and am worried about the bulb getting wet and shattering...or does that only happen with MH?
[ October 28, 2001: Message edited by: fishfreek ]

 

[mark-24]

I know that if you get some light bulbs wet they do shatter, but I don't know for sure if that applies to flo bulbs. Their are certain types of bulbs that you cannot touch because there are oils and greases on your hands that will cause it to blow up. And I dont think that you'll need to worry too much about that because when the people at CSL designed the lights, the were designing it for aquariums. Also 116w on a 45 gallon tank is pretty good, I don't think you need another 96w, but maybe another 32w, 20w, or so will work nicely.
-Mark