Frequency of changing hood lights

[tangman99]

Hi everyone!
I have a 90 gallon fish only with two 48" actinic white lights. I am starting to get a reddish color film on my glass just above the substrate and my local LFS was telling me that it is probably a combination of phosphates and my lights are old. He said that I need to change the lights once a year. My lights are 14 months old now.
Is this a fact? Do I need to change these once a year? I did replace my UV bulb as I knew that was required, but I had never heard about changing the flouresence.
EDITED: I just removed the lights and one is an 48" actinic white and the other is just a plain old 48" GE bulb. Should I put in two actinic whites or something else? As mentioned, I have fish only, no inverts, coral or live rock.
Thanks.
[ August 04, 2001: Message edited by: TangMan99 ]

 

[mr . salty]

YES,you do need to change bulbs at least once a year.For a fish only setup,the bulbs you have would be fine.Although I prefer more blue's than what you have.Try a 50/50 instead of the GE bulb...

 

[tangman99]

Thanks Mr. Salty.
I just wanted to make sure as you never know what the LFS is going to say. Can you help me a little more?
In searching for Actinic White bulbs, I am coming up empty at my favorite place to order parts. Is there another name that is used for actinic white (10K, 20K Trichromatic Super Daylights..? There are a lot of bulbs listed but nothing called a white actinic. I did find a 50/50 blue/daylight bulb. Is that the type you meant for the 50/50?
If it's not against the rules of the board, can you tell me which lights specifically you would buy. I'm looking at the coralife lights.
Would you buy the ones with or without reflectors. My hood strip is just white and does not have reflectors built in.
Thanks again for the help.