RE:Fluorex Lights ( Aquatic Plants Digest V5 #389)

["Wayne J" <w.jones at sympatico_ca>]

Hi Giancarlo,

This is GREAT.!  I have been looking for a way to vastly improve the
lighting over both my 20G and my 10G which both have the original little
fluorescent fixtures that came with them.

I checked it out on homedepot.com and at lightsofamerica.com.  I would
buy it today, but live in Canada, and homedepot.com seems to ship only
to the US.  Does anyone know whether there is a Canadian Home Depot
website?  I haven't been able to find one.  Or do other Canadian
retailers carry this fixture?

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I would stay away from those lights. If you want cheap lighting go with a 4
x 32 watt ballast
and overdrive some 2' lamps. Fluorex does not publish any specs. to support
their claims and in fact appear to be telling lies about their products. The
replacement lamp for that fixture is either a 27 or 36 watt lamp. Where 8000
lumens comes into it I don't know. The only 8000 lumen CF is 3' long, 96
watts and made by Panasonic. If you actually do track this fixture down and
buy it I would bet big money you will be disappointed.

There is no way to use a nominal lamp wattage to determine how much light a
fixture will produce. Like many others you are being misled by the watts per
gallon rule. Just because a lamp says it is 65 watts doesn't mean it uses 65
watts and just because it says 8000 lumens doesn't mean the lamp produces
8000 lumens with that particular ballast. On top of that the actual shape of
the fixture has a profound effect on how much light might make it into your
tank. Anyone who wants to know how much light their fixture will produce
must know the ballast factor of the ballast, the fixture efficiency and the
lamp lumens. If you wish to know how much plant usable light will be
produced you have to multiply the lamp lumens by a correction factor which
depends on the actual spectrum of the lamp. There is no other way to do this
without taking some pretty sophisticated light measurements.

Wayne