please give me the basics on lighting

[jayster]

I think I should have better lighting. Not necessarily to support corals but for visual effect and to keep my fish/inverts/liverock happy in the 29gal dow. I may down the road add a shroom or other moderate lighting inhabitant happy. Do I need a blue and a white bulb? can I go with one of those 50/50 actinic bulbs? Right now I have the most basic 18" florescent and would just like to bump the quality of the bulb without having to buy new ballast. Any thoughts?

 

[surfnturf]

Check out the discussion of the LOA bulb, might be a good alternative for you, no ballast to buy. You will need to build a hood to accomodate the bulbs. They are a standard screw in bulb so the hardware will be real cheap. The bulbs use 65 watts and give off the same amount of light as 500 watts of incandescent light. The bulbs are 6500 Kelvin so you may (or may not) want to use an additional actinic bulb to add some of the blue that corals prefer. The LOA bulbs are about $25 at Wally World. This is a link to info on the light I am referring to:
http://www.rl180reef.com/pages/lighting/sumplight.htm