Lighting Questions

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The True Guapote

The True Guapote

Piranha
MFK Member
Apr 14, 2005
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Cincinnati, Ohio
Okay I'm going to be setting up my 220 in the next few weeks and I've got a few lighting concerns. First off the tank will be in my basement so the lighting will be quite limited down there. I want to avoid coming home and flipping on the fluorescent lights and my fish freak out. I'm wondering what would be an effective way of replicating morning light. I was thinking perhaps having an actinic light coming and then a couple of fluorescent white tubes come on... Think that would prevent my fish from freaking out real bad when the light comes on? I have pbass and they can get a little skittish when the light flicks on if it's dark.
 
What I do is I have a couple of timers set up and run a low powered light just enough to see the fish from morning till 2 hours before I get home and have the second timer with the main lights come on and shut off an hour or so before I go to bed with the lower power light running till just after bed time.
 
For the low power light I just used the basic strip light that came with my tank as usually the just a basic T8 doesn't put out a whole lot of light and then for my main I have dual T5HO.
 
do home improvement stores like Lowe's have good T-5 lighting? Neither of my large tanks have lights and I was thinking of just using something like T5
 
The True Guapote;3038446; said:
do home improvement stores like Lowe's have good T-5 lighting? Neither of my large tanks have lights and I was thinking of just using something like T5
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I use the cheap coralife t5's on all of my tanks. They do a pretty good job for a very reasonable price.
 
LowCel;3038496; said:
I use the cheap coralife t5's on all of my tanks. They do a pretty good job for a very reasonable price.
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what fixture do you use? just something from home improvement store or something from LFS?
 
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