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are tehy better than flourescent lights?

i was jsut looking thru all-glass's site trying to find the specs of the bulb that came with my hood and i stumbled over these mini power compact bulbs. all glass says each has light equivilant to 50W but they are only 25W and fit in incandescent fixtures.

Not better, perse, but they have more watts of light output for the power consumtion. Far superior to incandescent, and a little more efficient and more versatile than NO fluorescent bulbs.

ok thanks, i was just wondering if they were better cause the site made em sound like they were

Mini compacts have been sold for years in hardware stores as "energy saver" bulbs because they consume less electricity to produce the same ammount of light. They are a flourescent bulb that's twisted up and designed to screw into table lamps and fishtanks .

I have them on two of my tanks.

When you're calculating the wpg for your tank you need to consider the flourescent ammount of light, not the incandescent light. In the example you give you would only use the 25w.
If you're interested in growing plants then you'll need flourescent (and daylight of the right kelvin) for good results. Even if you're not interested in plants, they are good because they provide brighter light and are more energy efficient.

HTH a bit .


^_^
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[span class="edited"][Edited by Babelfish 2004-07-08 11:03][/span]

ahh ic ic babel, thank you as well.


plants was the reason i even asked this question. because my hood only has a 24" tube which is less than 1WPG. i was looking for a cheap way to get better lighting but i guess it wont happen :'

Um, how big is your tank?

You might find it just as cheap to retro fit the hood with a double batten unit, or place another batten next to the other one.

I've got a double batten 24" light in my canopy which is giving me 3.0 WPG.