I upgraded my lighting today.

I sold some car parts on craigslist today and made more than I expected so I spent some of it on the aquariums. My 10 gallon came with two 25w incandescent bulbs and I have wanted to replace them with cfl bulbs for a long time. It finally happened! I was at wal-mart and I was wandering around waiting for my fiancee to finish looking at clothes and annoying pillows for the bed. I bought two 13w cfl bulbs for under four dollars.





The bulb that I was using on my 30 gallon came with the tank when I got it and are probably quite old. So I bought a new bulb for that as well. What I bought was a GE color reveal kitchen and bath t12-f20. I know it's 20 watts it doesn't say what color range is but it had more lumens than any of the other bulbs that they had in stock so I went for that.



The change in appearance in my 10 gallon is dramatic. Everything is so much brighter. Now that I have the two 13w bulbs I am at 2.6 wpg. I am concerned that that is too much light without C02. Should I use my lights for a short period of time like maybe six hours?

On my 30 gallon the new bulb looks more yellow than the old one but that's about it. My light fixture sits inside a box on top of my hood and has a piece of glass under it. I like the look of the light fixture on the tank so I think I will gut it and switch over to CFL. I am concerned about having too much light and needing CO2. Whats the high point that I can go to? I think that my 10 gallon is getting too much light so I may use those 13w bulbs in this hood. I have not measured yet to see how many I can fit in that hood. Three would be easy to do and I think I could get four in there. I need to go out to the garage and bust apart some lamps and see what can be done.






I like the idea of CFL bulbs because I can go from low light to high light fairly cheap and easy. I am upgrading my lighting system in anticipation of adding more plants.

 

I have the same hood on my 10 gallon and did the same thing work great. nice thing is they don't explode like I had the incandescent bulb do when I got a little water on it

 

Are you using CO2? I'm afraid that I will end up with a lot of algae.

 

I don't think you have too much light to cause an algae bloom. The only suggestion I have would be to keep an eye on it and if you start noticing algae growth then cut down on the hours per day that your lights are on.

 

I'd say 4-6 hour photoperiod.

Do you have any live plants?

 

I have java fern and cabomba carolinia in both aquariums for now but I plan on adding some more.

 

I plan on doing the same. Right now I only have a T8 15W Fluorescent Strip Light. Not very bright...

 

I was going to start mounting the bases in my fixture this morning but I woke up to a dead ghost shrimp. The shrimp is in my son's aquarium and he doesn't do well with death so I went to petco to get a replacement but all that they had were amano shrimp and bamboo shrimp so I went to the store in town (that I am not a fan of their customer service). I bought a ghost shrimp there and at petco I bought a molly and two neon tetras to round out my school so maybe later today I will tackle my lighting upgrade. I have been looking around online and it seems that anywhere under two wpg of light is okay without CO2 so I am going to try to keep it in that range.

 

So I finally made some progress today. I am taking a break to think up a way to mount my bases for the CFL lamps. I found a few lamps in my scrap metal pile and took them apart and snagged three sockets. I removed the t12 fixture from my aquarium hood and I am in the process of attaching my sockets. I need to go root around in my electrical box and find a switch and some wire nuts but so far everything has been free.






Back to work. I will post updates as I make progress

 

Progress! I mounted a light switch and have two of the three bases mounted and I am waiting for glue to dry to do some more wiring and then more gluing. I ended up mounting all three bases differently because of how they were made. My hood has a few standoffs for screws that attached the old light fixture. I used those to attach my light sockets. One of my sockets has a little threaded rod on the side that a knob screws onto and you spin it to turn the light on or off. I made sure that it is switched to on and used gorilla glue to glue it into the hole that the old light fixture attached to.




all glued in




The next one had these big plates that used to hold it into the fixture one plate is connected to the common side and one is on the live side so I cut the plate that was hot off of the light socket so that it's not a hazard and on the common plate I drilled a little hole and used one of the screws and holes that used to hold the old fixture on.

I didn't take a picture of before I cut it.




The third socket has one of those bars that you push thru the middle of the socket to turn it on or off so I decided to mount it with that bar. I used one of the standoffs that used to mount the old fixture and enlarged it with my drill and as soon as the other socket that I glued together is dry I am going to finish some wiring and then the last socket will be glued in using gorilla glue.


my switch




The hot side will be switched and then all of the sockets will be wired parallel from the switched side of the switch. the common side will be twisted together with a wire nut.

 

I was going to do this then I saw the fixtures I wanted to use were 20 a piece and if I spent over 30 might as well just bought a t5ho fixture...

I wanted to put 2x twin screw base in my hood for a total of 4 cfl then I was going to put a brinks 7 day programmable timer in for the switch...

 

I haven't spent anything but time on this so far. However when I get done I will be buying bulbs. If I didn't already have everything I would probably buy a new fixture.

 

I went to the store and bought bulbs. It's quite an improvement. My daughter approves also

 

you are really making me regret the path I chose I ended up with a t8 strip light w/electronic ballast to replace a t12 with a rusty transformer and starter switch I could have looked around till I found some double sided fixtures for cheap and ended up with 52watts of light for it instead of 17 watts

Oh something I was going to do was take some aluminum cans and cut them open and use them to make reflectors for each of the cfl. Or you could get silver krylon fusion and paint the inside silver another thing I was tempted to do.

 

I have some tape with an aluminum backing that I plan to use for reflector but I figured I will save it for another day. I spent enough time on it for now.