4 foot fixtures

[RobbieG]

I'm sure theres a reason - but - why are 4 foot dual flourescent fixtures 15 bucks at walmart and 200 bucks at petco?

[Lady Hobbs]

Because those at Walmart are just shop light bulbs and Petco has the T-5 plant lights probably with fans and the waterproofing.

It's the bulbs that cost ya.

My HomeDepot has them for $24 but I think the bulbs are like 24 watts is all.

[Drumachine09]

I was looking at shop lights yesterday, and you can get 40w bulbs in 7000k for 10 bucks, with a 15 dollar fixture

[gm72]

I use just regular shop lights and a mixture of bulbs to start my plants indoors when it is still very early spring. They do well, so I would assume the same for a planted tank.

[Lady Hobbs]

http://www.hallman.org/plant/lights.html

I've read about this fixture pretty often. It's sold at Ace Hardward with pretty cheap replaceable lights. I would hate to have to keep moving it to feed the fish, tho. (Using two of them, of course.)

[RobbieG]

That what I thought - but the bulbs are only 25 bucks each. I was thinking oof getting one of the expensive dual light setups. Right now I am using two singles - I had been putting it off cause the good ones were 200 bucks in the store or 100 - 150 online. 200 bucks in the store sounded better than seeing how many pieces the UPS guy would bring me. I was walking through the walmart and I noticed that they had the dual fixtures (T5 - T8) for 15 bucks.

I'll double check at the petco - but unless the fixture they're selling is a quad and i missed it I'd have to be kinda dumb not to go with the walmart one - even after I buy the bulbs I'd only be spending 65 bucks.

[Drumachine09]

I think you mean T10 or T8. Walmart doesnt carry T5s IME

[RobbieG]

Could be (I've got about 15 T8 bulbs so I wasn't to concerned with the other one)

[Lady Hobbs]

I'd like to find some cheaper lighting myself. There's a guy on Ebay selling lights and Cascade canisters but I did a review search on the lights he had. The fan is said to be very noisy and it's difficult to find replacement bulbs. They were some odd ball name and I'll think of them after this has posted. :)

I have a canopy for my 55, as well, and haven't bothered using it yet. It's heavy as heck and nothing you want to take off and on too often for sure. Being short and being puny doesn't help none. I could easily hook lights inside the lid but that canopy makes getting to the filters tough.

What about these shop lights tho. Do you think they will heat up the water? Do you plan on putting them on a glass top or hanging them? Maybe you can think of something that will work for me, too.

Let me know what you dream up.

[gm72]

The fans might be noisy, I don't know. I just want to suggest though that most of those fans can be replaced with computer cooling fans, a lot of which are VERY quiet. I know. I'm a computer geek. :27:

[RobbieG]

Very quiet and pretty cheap.

[gm72]

Definitely. I use 120mm fans on all of my machines, very quiet, very cheap. Most of the fans on the aquarium fixtures are, I think, 80mm fans. Easy to replace with cheap, quiet versions.

[RobbieG]

The last two cases I bought came with 8 built in.

[gm72]

8 80mm fans in a case? What case is that? Must be pretty noisy!