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New Compact Flourescent lighting....



Christine Martens asked:

>I'm about to upgrade the lighting on my 29 gal. tank and would appreciate some
>advice. Looking through my saved messages on lighting from the past several
>months has given me a good start, but I have this feeling that I probably have
>just enough information to be dangerous!!

I wanted to let everyone know about a great new flourescent light
blub/fixture that I found, bought and am using.

They are mini-fixtures (8.5" X 6.5") with this strange four pronged
fluorescent bulb (about 7" long and 4" wide) that is 27 watts and 6700K,
but is VERY, VERY bright (like metal halide, you cannot look directly into
the bulb--it burns your eyes). I saw two of these fixtures--that also
include a mini 9 watt Osram/Coralsavers bulb (they came with 03 actinic for
reefs, but I replaced them with 5000K daylight)--next to an identical tank
that had two 100W metal halides and two 36" actinics, and these
PowerCompact's were just as bright, if not brighter, and was MUCH cooler
(My 29g is now as bright as one of my reef tanks was with 4 HO
flourescents).... They cost $110 each, and each fixture comes mounted in a
great reflector with slide out acrylic lens and runs off of one single
rapid start ballast (but each bulb has it's own power cord), and Mark, a
honest dealer I really trust, claims that his clients love them (both
reefkeepers and freshwater planted)... We figure each 27W bulb is equal to
2-3 20W regular fluorescent bulbs or maybe one VHO 24", but are MUCH cooler
to operate.... Supposedly they were developed in Germany (rumor is Dupla
was involved). My dealer Mark recently installed  five of them over a 180
planted discus tank for Universal Studios, and the plants are
flourishing... The fixtures are marked:

         PowerCompact 27W
         6700K Ultra-daylight
         Linear Quad
         Custom Sealife, Inc.

If there is enough interest, I can get the name of the distributor (my
dealer installed them into a canopy for me, and I didn't take the boxes
home).

Highly recommend for the smaller tanks like my 29g--VERY small and neat,
and VERY bright!

Best,

Todd March in perpetual sunny Southern California
tmarch at primenet_com