If you could only have 1 fluorescent light ????

smallfry

smallfry

Member
A friend is giving me a 30" wide tank that they had FW fish in. I would like to make it SW. But big budget cuts are in effect. We just got done setting up a new 90g so the budget is tight!!
Question is what would be the best light I can do on a single fluorescent light hood???
Right now there is only a 20 watt bulb in it I dont' think that will do at all??
The tank measures 30" w x 12 deep x 23" high I think that makes it about 37g give or take...
I need all the opions I can get
Thanks
 
smallfry

smallfry

Member
No ideas from anyone??? I dont need fancy lights like eveyone here seen to use just want fish and healty live rock. I do have better lighting on my other tanks but they cand with and I am on a budget now...
 
reefraff

reefraff

Active Member
Is there a reason you can only have 1 light? I would think you could pickup a PC hood for that tank in the classified thread pretty cheap.
 
smallfry

smallfry

Member
I just got done setting up a 90g I got for x-mas so I am trying to keep this as low as I can go. I do look in the paper and will keep an eye out for something but most are complete set ups and dont want to split.>>>
I can start with a fish only if I have to but I really like the live rock. When I first started from FW to SW I did not use live rock and what a pain!!!
So In the long and short of it I would like to up grade the lighting as cheap as possible.
 
jlem

jlem

Active Member
Get yourself a 10K bulb. They are a nice and crisp white with enough Actinic to keep corals.
 
jake15

jake15

Member
Hey, you dont have to have lighting to keep just live rock....you can keep live rock under 15 watts if you wanted to. Just you will not be able to add any corals.
Jake
 
acekjd83

acekjd83

Member
Jake's right...
The live rock will be "live" since the bacteria dont need light to do their bio-filtering, but you wont get many of the other "critters" most people buy live rock for. most of the corals seeded in the live rock will not grow, but other stuff life featherdusters and non-photosynthetic filter-feeders wont mind low light, especially if you supplement with phyto...
good luck w/ the low light system... my 50g is a FW south-american cichlid tank with only 2 36" non-VHO fluorescents. Their irridescent scales look great even in low light, and they seem very bright due to the low levels of background light, so the contrast is striking.
also, i like the 50/50 bulbs, if you can only have one, but i do tend to prefer the more blue-ish(?) light.
 
maeistero

maeistero

Active Member
this might be out of the ordinary, but i've put smaller tanks next to my big tank and swerved (lol good word!) my light over a bit to get both tanks.
 
acekjd83

acekjd83

Member
that would be somewhere between base rock and "good" live rock, since it would have the good bacteria and all the good critters, but under low light conditions, it would be as if the photosynthetic things had never been there. so it would still be live rock, filter like live rock, but not be really pretty like high-light light rock.
 
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