I have an old-school All-Glass hinged top and 30" fluorescent light hood on my 29 gallon. I liked the look of it, and it blew out. I could only find one bulb at Home Depot. A Phillips bulb that is supposed to be daylight, but I'm getting a lot of green accented in the water. I think the temp is about 6000, so not sure what's going on. Looking at the bulb on it's own it looks pretty white to me. It's not soft white or yellow. Any know of a source for aquarium specific T12 fluorescent bulbs anymore? Or has everything just moved on to LED and I gotta make the switch. Just not sure where to go from here. Not sure I like the thought of those bracketed LED strip lights that go over the top of the tank. I feel like it'd reflect off my glass top and I'd get glare and reflection from it on to the back wall and perhaps just be visible depending on where I'm sitting in the room.
Looking to replace All-Glass T12 24" fluor bulb
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T12 is an obsolete format so it will be very hard to find. They aren’t made anymore.
But the good news is that a T8 will also fit. The pins are the same - it just leaves some room between bulbs that are side by side because T8s are only an inch wide instead of 1.5” wide like the T12s.
You should be able to find either T8 fluorescents or LED equivalents that are made to fit the pins on fixtures like yours.
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Well, not exactly. A T12 bulb is designed to operate at 40 watts with a magnetic ballast. A T8 bulb is designed to operate at 32 watts with an electronic ballast.
A magnetic ballast is an older technology that uses coils of wire to create a magnetic field to regulate current in a fluorescent lamp, while an electronic ballast utilizes electronic components to precisely control the electrical pulses sent to the lamp.
A T8 fits the T12 ballast, but if the ballast was for T12, it's going to overwatt the T8 and make it wear out quicker and it's going to perform poorly in the T12 ballast with an unstable current supply causing brightness along the bulb in some areas and dimness in others, or the "cloud" effect to the tube where you see the fluorescent light kind of shift like smoke down the tube instead of just a solid brightness.
you should really change out the T12 ballast for a T8 ballast for optimum life and performance of the T8 bulbs if going to T8, but T8 is also going obsolete for LED now also. it's not all that hard to get led Strip and a driver and strip out the ballast wiring and switch of the hood and replace it with LED tapes and connect the driver and put in a new switch, it's a small learning curve.
if it's as old as I'm thinking it is, it's got a hinged top, and a glass panel under the light and the light fixture part lifts off the tank lid section? If so you wouldn't need to get too fancy with protecting the LED from the water either since the glass panel is there for that.
A magnetic ballast is an older technology that uses coils of wire to create a magnetic field to regulate current in a fluorescent lamp, while an electronic ballast utilizes electronic components to precisely control the electrical pulses sent to the lamp.
A T8 fits the T12 ballast, but if the ballast was for T12, it's going to overwatt the T8 and make it wear out quicker and it's going to perform poorly in the T12 ballast with an unstable current supply causing brightness along the bulb in some areas and dimness in others, or the "cloud" effect to the tube where you see the fluorescent light kind of shift like smoke down the tube instead of just a solid brightness.
you should really change out the T12 ballast for a T8 ballast for optimum life and performance of the T8 bulbs if going to T8, but T8 is also going obsolete for LED now also. it's not all that hard to get led Strip and a driver and strip out the ballast wiring and switch of the hood and replace it with LED tapes and connect the driver and put in a new switch, it's a small learning curve.
if it's as old as I'm thinking it is, it's got a hinged top, and a glass panel under the light and the light fixture part lifts off the tank lid section? If so you wouldn't need to get too fancy with protecting the LED from the water either since the glass panel is there for that.
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