ref light?

[bowtiefan]

Hello
were to start? I'm new to the nano stuff(and to the site!), I've had salt water fish ony tanks in th past with great luck ,but heres my ?, I bought a 29g biocube for my Mom for christmas (shes alway loved reef tanks but been affraid to try one so I'm doing it for her!) I've reseaching the mods for them for 3 mo's and I'm doing the ref in the 2nd chamber but i'm stuck on what light to use, I found a 9watt palm flouresent light and a small pod of 6 led's 1.25 watt from each bulb 7.5 total which would be better for the cheato in the ref? I feel kinda dumb to ask but I wanna get it right the first time!
Thanks

 

[gmann1139]

I'm not familiar with the lights you're talking about, but 9 watts of fluorescent doesn't sound like enough.
I bought the cheapest quartz halogen light that HD sells. It was only like $10-20, which is cheaper than any specialty light you're going to find.
Its actually 40w, which is more power (and heat) than I need, so I have it fairly far from the tank, but the chaeto seems to like it.

 

[bowtiefan]

thanks! tryin to get somthing small with not alot of heat! I've seen those small sub lights and they look to dim

 

[kromix]

I'm using this:

Submersible LED (on fleeBay) x2 ( There is a listing that has 2 8 Wide led sticks together which is the one I bought.... ) Shown above is the single 8 LED
Keep in mind he has diff colors, different lenghts, different amount of Led's u can fit it to your needs but I chose that one....

 

[fish4rudy]

I have a square fixture and a 10 watt coralife floresent bulb. I scrapped of the black paint on the rear of the middle chamber to keep the light out of the way. I used velcro and attatched the light to the rear of the tank.

 

[kromix]

Just posted this in my 24G Nano picture diary... THought I'd post it here so you can see what I made...
All I did was cut out pieces of eggcrate, smooth them out, connect them together w/ Zip Ties, Zip Tie the Submersible LED Tubes to each side and insert chaeto and submerge. Quick and easy.

Results:
[list type=decimal][*]No water temp increase maybe .5 degrees if that, still the same, water/unit does not get hot around it at all....
[*]As you can see the LED's were mounted to the lower portion of the eggcrate apparatus to avoid Light Spillover at night and there is none, complete and total darkness in the tank at night not a shred of light comes through the top into the tank....
Light effectively gets around and covers the whole chamber thanks to the 8 LED's on each side spread apart. Great light coverage
Ran it overnight, everything fine, will report back on how fast/well the chaeto grows.
[/list type=decimal]

 

[fish4rudy]

How much where those L.E.D.'s? I like those, very nice.

 

[subielover]

That is awesome, well done

 

[kromix]

Light came out to $35 bucks, little more than your halogen setup most people do, but I think it might work a bit better as it spreads light around everywhere on both sides not just one source.....