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It is about time to replace the lightbulbs of my 72 gallon discus tank and a look at the wattage of the current bulbs sent me through the roof: I had bought the set up specified for advanced planting and high wattage and trusted the dealer. In response to this request I was fitted with a twin tube fluorescent strip light from All-Glass. The current bulbs are 32 watts each. No surprise that I am having trouble ...

Now my question is: can I safely put in VHO bulbs to increase the wattage (there are VHO bulbs from URI that have 110 Watt per 48 inch light) or will I have to shell out money to get a hood to accomodate such bulbs? Anyone an idea about the highest possible wattage I can go with my current hood?

Sorry to hear that you got shafted by a LFS, but that no your problem now. You need to look a the fixture and see what wattage transformer is in it. After you determine what it is than you will know watts bulb you van put in it. You can not however put a bulb of a 100 watts in a 32 watts fixture it will not work. You may have to buy a new light fixture, I have to guess that this is a plastic hood that all-glass makes. There are a lot of Lighting choices out there. You will most like like need 200 watts with a K rating around 6500 to 8000. Most plants grow will with a 2 Watts per gal. You can search the Internet and find what you want or need, but remember lighting can get very expensive, but there are off name brands that a lot of us are having good luck with.

Djrichie
"So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish" Douglas Adams

thanks for the response DJ. I will call All-Glass tomorrow to get a definitive answer but I fear the worst ... I am upset because I might be stuck with a fixture that will never accomodate any of my aquatic displays - I do not see myself switching from planted aquaria to plastic decoration or rocks and driftwood only. The LFS did himself a huge disservice as I would have paid happily the extra bucks for high output!!

There are a lot of low light requirement plants out there. You just need to look around, this site I recommend for plants great selection and good prices. Floridadriftwood.com

Djrichie
"So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish" Douglas Adams

I have VHO lights for my reef tank and you`ll need another system because the ballast you have now will not work for the VHO bulbs. I dont know if you want to go to a retro fit kit for your lights. That is what I have and it is just endcaps on the VHO bulbs that are wired to the ballast and switch. Not very expensive at all. And incidently URI makes the best VHO bulbs because of that internal reflector. I dont use anything else.