Possible light usage - fluorescent tube

Plunder · May 21, 2020

So in our kitchen we have under lighting below the cabinets. I never bothered to look at them, until today. They look like 12-inch (measured) bulbs but there are two slots for two bulbs. I started to think maybe I could utilize these somehow with some better lights. It's a nano tank, Fluval 13.5g. Would it be possible to have a mixed reef nano tank fixtures with upgraded bulbs? And can you please recommend some for me. I'll post some pictures and hopefully, I can get some feedback.

The size is 12 inch and the current bulb is 8watts. Thanks!

Alarmguy66 · May 21, 2020

Is it possible, depends on your idea of a mixed reef. Not sure many people would recommend it, given many other options. T5 lighting is great, and works well for reef tanks, but those bulbs are regular t5, not t5 HO (high output). HO bulbs will be 15 watts each, instead of 8. Unfortunately you cant just throw a HO bulb in a normal fixture and expect more output. They will work, there really just isnt an advantage to it. T5HO fixtures have different electronics to drive the bulb harder and make it brighter. So maybe for softies the lighting would be sufficient, but minimal. I think you can rule out anything calciferous.

andrewey · May 21, 2020

I would also caution you that not only are the ballasts on those fixtures not great, but bulb costs are pretty expensive to get "reef friendly" spectrums as most manufacturers make bulbs in set wattages such as 24w, 39w, etc. In most cases, a small LED light would be cheaper or finding a used small T5 fixture then trying to find the right bulbs. Plus that fixutre is normal T5, not T5HO.

Udest · May 21, 2020

actualy you may be able to use anything that has 5000k since the tank is only 13 gallons i am asuming it isn't very tall so you should not loose too much of the lighting spectrum in shallow tank , currently i am using a daylight led bulb on a 5 gallon and getting decent results with blue ridge and organ pipe and other softies . So you might be able to get away with it on some other corals as well.