Metal halide lighting?

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I

Industrial

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jan 22, 2010
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Buffalo, NY
Right now I only have 4 3' striplights on my 165 gallon aquarium and I would like to step up the lighting a bit and hopefully get a shimmering effect. I do not have money to do LED lighting, but I noticed at HD there were some cheap 150 watt metal halide flood lights.

I was always under the impression that metal halide is the most expensive way to go. Would these lights be okay for plants? I remember reading in a plant book a while back that metal halides do not provide the right spectrum, but at their wattage plants still thrive. Would I have to find halide bulbs that are "plant" spectrum?

I have never used halide before, so if I did buy 2 of these, is there anything else I should know about halides?
 
I've never heard of halides not having the right spectrum. They make all sorts of different spectrum bulbs. You're going to pay a lot more long term for the halides than you would for LED. Not only will you have to buy the proper bulbs (they probably don't come with good lights), but you'll have to replace them every year. At $30-80 a piece that gets pretty pricey. Then there is the 300 watts of light you'll be running for 10-13 hours a day.
I just put LED floodlights on my 130. Cost about $200 to get all the lights, uses 80 watts of power, and should last about 10-13 years before needing replacements. The plants are growing very good under them as well.
 
Do the floodlights produce the same shimmer effect as 1w LED bulbs? I've tried different LED lights, and I have found that 1w LED bulbs make the water shimmer, but if there are more bulbs than wattage, the beams are not intense enough to create a shimmer, and instead it just looks like a green fluorescent tube.

Right now, my backup plan are T5HO fixtures from ebay that are 50 each. They will get the job done, but will not create the same appearance as high intensity halide bulbs or 1w LED bulbs.
 
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