# 60 watt lighting



## crispy0 (Feb 24, 2009)

i have a 60 watt daylight energy saving spiral and i was wondering if it really is 60 watts so i can use it on my 20 gal to boost the lighting?


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## davemonkey (Mar 29, 2008)

If it says "replaces a 60 watt" or "has the light output of a 60 watt", then no. It's closer to 9 or 13 watts of compact flourescent lighting. The fact that it puts out the same visual light (to humans) as a 60 watt bulb doesn't mean anything to plants.

My guess is that that's the case here (wattage-wise). A true 60-watt spiral bulb would be very large, like 8" long and a 3" diameter spiral (just from some of the CFL's I've seen at stores).


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## crispy0 (Feb 24, 2009)

wow thanks. okay so it says14 cf so if i had 2 it would be 28 really. if so then it would give me an extra watt/g and would boost me to around 2.5 w/g and that would be perfect. is this correct?


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## davemonkey (Mar 29, 2008)

Yep, that's right. My brother is about to set up his first ever planted tank, and he's also going to use those type of bulbs. 

Out of curiosity, does the bulb give a kelvin rating or a CRI index? I've not been able to find a spiral bulb that gives that info yet.

-Dave


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## Newt (Apr 1, 2004)

Watts = Watts as Davemonkey said. The difference is that incandecents have a large amount of red light and yellow both of which arent picked up by the human eye as is green light. Lumens is the measure of light that is percieved by the human eye.










Most spirals do come with kelvin ratings but I wouldnt trust them to be accurate.


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## crispy0 (Feb 24, 2009)

they are 10,000k daylight bulbs.it says on the plastic wraping thing. i went to my lfs a little while ago and it has a.24 watt 6,500 k cf light that fits my socket so i will be using that. cant believe how perfect this is.


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## Newt (Apr 1, 2004)

Wow, I've never seen a spiral CFL with such a high rating. I have some daylight CFLs (for the house) and they are 5500K and quite blue in appearance.


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## davemonkey (Mar 29, 2008)

crispy0 said:


> they are 10,000k daylight bulbs.it says on the plastic wraping thing. i went to my lfs a little while ago and it has a.24 watt 6,500 k cf light that fits my socket so i will be using that. cant believe how perfect this is.


I have to say I'm rather jealous.  Here, all I can find is the ones at WalMart or Lowes and none of them have K ratings listed. They either say "Cool White" or "Daylight" .

-Dave


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## crispy0 (Feb 24, 2009)

lucky i guess cause it was the only one that wasnt 50/50 actinic blue. it said specificaly that they were 6,500 k and i asked her and she said it was right .it is not really a spiral it is more like 2 thin U turns next to each other.

the ones i was going to use originally had three different types. they were 10,000k daylight, cool white, and incandecent and the daylight were circled.


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