Lighting

Compact Fluorescent Lighting


Lighting – In February 99 I upgraded my lights from 4 – 40W fluorescent bulbs to the CustomSeaLife PC48455 retrofit system. That’s 4 – 55 W bulbs. That’s an increase of 60W for the tank. Boy does that make a difference.
I am ramping the hours the lights are on but if you look at the tank pictures you will be able to see the difference.
Below is a picture showing the retrofit kit mounted in the hood of my tank. The reflector is 48 inches long and I have two actinics and two daylights staggered in the hood.

To give you a better view of the lights here are two closeups. It shows a pair of actinic and daylight bulbs
mounted to the reflector.

CustomSeaLife claims that they have good hard coral and clam growth using these lights. Since I’m still ramping up to 14 hours on for the actinics and 12 hours on for the daylights I haven’t added any new animals to the tank.

One of the banks of light, two bulbs, are the actinic lights and are set to be on for 14 hours each day. The two daylight bulbs are set for 12 hours a day and go on an hour after the actinics go on in the morning and go out an hour before the actinics at night. It was the best way I could think of to simulate sunrise and sunset given the two sets of lights.

Scroll to Top