advice needed: aquarium lamps.

[Boyam]

Hello everyone!

Have another question for anyone willing!

Ive decided to get ride of my plants (in the planning). i want to turn the tank into sand/lots of drift wood/2-3 swords(potted) and perhaps some floating plant. Id like to keep the light in the tank low; and lower in other parts to create a more natural looking discus environment.

So any suggestion on any lamps, and best light bulbs i could purchase? Ive looked at multiple web sites but have no found anything other than the basic linear light strips.

Here is the kind of lighting im aiming for:

[bartek]

Yeah that is a great looking tank I have to agree. I have seem the pic before and the setup looks great.

Does the tank your looking to set up liek this have a hood? This will obviously limit the light options.

With no need to grow any plants I think you may be able to find something not necessarily made for the aquarium, especially if oyuhave lids on the tank.

Maybe some sort of desk lamp would work. You can get a large variety which take a number of different type of bulbs. Someting that maybe takes Halogen bulbs. I have seem fittings with the following or similar bulb:

http://www.bulbs.com/eSpec.aspx?ID=10486&Ref=Halogen+Bulbs&RefId=22&Ref2=Light+Bulbs

[ILLUSN]

If you want that kind of effect and dont want to grow plants all you need is 2 clip on spotlights, you dont want a strip, head off to bunnings (or your US equivilent massive all in one hardware store) and find some small clip lamps ($6 each) these use small edison screw bulbs, while your there find 2 focused feature light globes (mirrored on the base to fous the light into a beam $14ea MAX) and your done your entire lighting will cost you $40 it will use 40w (the same as a 4 foot t8 strip light) and your laughing all the way to the bank.

[Boyam]

thank you guys.

the hood does have a hood but it is a very tall hood. gives me about 7 inches of room maybe a foot from waterline.

i was thinking of doing exactly what ILLUSN said just needed to hear it 8)

thank you guys!

[ILLUSN]

Thats the perfect hood for that setup with the extra height you can "aim" the light exactly where you want it, my advice would be to glue or screw in some dowl rails bout an inch thick just to you can perfectly tune your light to exactly where you want it (bu moving the lights along the rail and tilting as needed.

[bartek]

Probably need to have an non transparant board or similar between the light and water surface if you want to create the shadow like in the pic.

Probably could just sit it on the glass covers and move it around to make the shadow where you want it.

You have to post some picks once your done :-)

[ILLUSN]

dont put the lamps on the glass, the incandesent and mercury type globes get way too hot you could overheat the lamp housing causing the fire or super heat the glass causing it to shatter if water splashed onto it, try and keep them at least 6 inches off the glass surface (8 would be better)