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My Fish Tank by Lam Nguyen |
Lighting |
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What I currently have:
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Lighting ... Ahhh.. The quest for more lights. Where should I begin, the endless search on the Internet or the time spend staring at the lighting section at Menards or Home Depot stores or the many hours of driving around the Twincity in search for specular aluminum. What I have in my fish tank is a pair of full spectrum fluorescents T12-40W each, made from Westinghouse. I brought it at Menards store for about 8 bucks each. I also brought Sun Stick T12-40W, standard T12-40W Cool Light and standard T8-32W Cool Light at Menard too. After trying all of those lights, I finally settled on the full spectrum light from the Westinghouse. The color render of a the full spectrum light is much better. The Sun Stick is a T12-40W 5000K color. It has a bit of yellowing cast light color. The standard T12-40W have a whitish washout light color. The standard T8-32W have the same whitsh washout but have more intensity. The T8-32W has 2800 lumen while the T12-40W has 2200 lumen. The full spectrum has 1900 lumen. The full spectrum color render is much better, the plant look greener, the neon fish look brighter, the light look cleaner and clearer. |
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I believe the current rule of thumb of wattage per gallon, for example 2W per gallon or 3W per gallon, is misleading. Some people would spread four T12-40W over a 90 gallons to get the right wattage per gallon. Some would spread 4 Power Compact 55W so that they can get 2W per gallon or 3W per gallon. I do not believe that this is right. Light rays reflect when it incident angle is less than 50 degree (wait.. check your physic book before take my word for it. It may be the other way around. Or it may be 53 degree but it definitly in the 50's). So, the intensity of a 40W fluorescent light that actually strike water and not reflected back is only about 1/4 of it total lumen. So when adding 4-40W you actually get only 1/4 or less of each bulb. You have your wattage per gallon increase but the intensity of light that penetrated water remain the same. What is needed was to increase the intensity that penetrate water or a reflector. With that thought, I searched high, I searched low, I searched everywhere for the right reflector. But I could not find the right reflector. It either not the right shape or too expensive. So I decided to make my own reflector the old fashion way, do-it-yourself. Of course. |
If you are interest in how I build my multifacet reflector then click here. If you are not satified with the multifacet reflector then perhaps you want to take a look at a more advance reflector, the true parabolic reflector. Ahh....yes.. the true parabolic reflector, the holy grail of all reflector. click here. for my design of it.
Here is a few picture of my lighting system
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