# Good buy on T8 fixture and bulbs



## t2000kw (Jul 29, 2006)

At today's meeting I asked Matt about his bright but rather small light fixtures over his shrimp tanks. He said that they were Home Depot $8 fixtures with an electronic ballast and the bulbs were the cheap T8's for about $7 a pair.

I stopped on the way home from the meeting in Washington Courthouse and bought one. The price at the register wasn't right, so if you buy a set of these, especially the bulbs, watch the price. They are lke $6.97 a pair but $5.49 or so each. They rang up as two separate bulbs instead of a pair at the discounted price. A quick call form the register to the person in lighting cleared the matter up and the right UPC code was entered, giving me the right price.

But more on the light. It has an instant-on (no delay) electronic ballast. The bulbs are 32 watt but have the equivalent light output of a 40 watt bulb (or perhaps a bit more). They are "shop light" style, with attached 3-wire grounded cord and plug. It comes with hanging hardware if you care to hang it over your tank but I just laid it over the glass top. For $15 you won't do better for price. As for the color spectrum of the bulb, I didn't check, but studies have shown that the cheap bulbs (like cool white) do better than special plant growth bulbs. Of course you may prefer a certain color temperature for appearance sake, but I like the color of these. They seem brighter than the pair of 40 watt bulbs I was using on the angelfish 55 gallon tank.

If you want a higher quality light they are clearing out a stainless steel fixture for $7.00, stainless steel reflector, electronic ballast. But the reflector does not come down around the bulb very far, so it would be glaring in your eyes if it weren't recessed in a box or something. It's not exactly a flat reflector, but it doesn't curve down much. The center section does go down below the bulbs though, so it will allow the fixture to rest on a flat surface. It's a $25 fixture for $7, so if it fits your needs, it may be a better buy than the one I bought. Since I put mine directly on top of a glass top, it wouldn't work well in my application. If I had the money to spend (getting laid off for 2 weeks so I didn't want to buy more than one), I would have bought the three stainless fixtures they had left for use elsewhere. 

I didn't realize that electronic ballasts had become cheap enough to include them in the low-end fixtures. A replacement standard ballast for a single 20W bulb costs almost as much as the fixture I bought.


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## jonathan03 (Oct 20, 2005)

I took a look at Matt's setup too and it seems like these bulbs are a heck of deal. They are much cheaper than the compact florescent lights I bought from AH Supply.

Sorry Matt if you ever go to a Home Depot and all their T8 lighting equipment is out of stock.


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## t2000kw (Jul 29, 2006)

But compact fluorescent bulbs have their place. They're good for retrofitting into the inexpensive 10 gallon hoods that use regular tubular screw-in type incandescent bulbs. There is even a tubular CF just for that purpose that fits in the same narrow space. 

And they are really nice to replace bulbs in the house. I was able to get a ceiling light fixture that only was rated for a couple of 60 watt bulbs, which would have been quite dim in the room it was going in, and bought the largest CF bulbs that would fit in the fixture. It's quite bright in that room now. And the fixture isn't nearly as hot as it would have been with a couple of 60 watt incandescent bulbs. 

Over time, I'm replacing most of the regular bulbs with CF bulbs. Even on the garage, I replaced one of the 4 spotlights with one that has a CF bulb inside a spotlight housing. It worked even in the cold of winter. So if I see more of these outdoor spotlights at a good price, I'll replace them all. These aren't as bright as the 100 or 75 watt spots out there, but it uses a 15 watt CF, and it's enough light for the job. 

I'm all for reducing carbon emissions on the individual level. I'll consider the air car (runs 200 to 300 km on compressed air) or a decent electric when one is available for around town use. Maybe even a hybrid when I'm convinced that they are reliable long-term and the price comes down.


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## Troy McClure (Aug 3, 2005)

Sorry to take this off-topic. Don - there is a guy in Ohio that retro-fitted a dune buggy to run entirely off water. There are no hydrogen storage tanks because it's extracted on the fly from the water tank. I can't remember the guy's name. Maybe somebody will know.

Also, I laughed my ass off when I saw this article the other day - http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/002088.html . Then I laughed even harder at Gore on TV saying, "The Earth has a fever!" I don't know where this jerk gets his information. If he'd bother to look at the data that's available from NASA, ESA, etc., he'd know the entire solar system "has a fever." Our Sun makes up the vast majority of the mass in our system. When it changes, we bloody change. How is this so f-ing hard for Gore and the idiots he's whipping up to understand???

OK, back on topic. Yeah, T-8s are great at a great price. I can't wait until the high-power LEDs come down in price so that they can actually compete with CF. The three XR-E LEDs I bought cost over $20!


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## t2000kw (Jul 29, 2006)

I don't know if you watched "An Inconvenient Truth" or not. It's an interesting movie. Sure, Gore does sensationalize global warming a bit in his own mild mannered way, but the case is pretty clear that something is going on and we are in the midst of a warming trend that isn't going away. Extrapolation from the historical data is always problematic at best, since a trendline of the future can be off by quite a bit, but any trendline from our historical data suggests we have a problem on our hands. The question is how bad, how soon, and is it too late to do anything about it. Apparently there has been political motivation to suppress the data that NASA, NOAA, and other government agencies have gathered, but it's out of the bag now. 

We did have a "mini" ice age in the 1300's (I think it was around then) for a couple hundred years or so, and it was after a warming trend. 

If you haven't seen the movie, it's worth a watch, even if you think Gore is a nut. Most of what he shows is just historical data. Some of his conclusions are speculative, like hurricane Katrina being a result of global warming (may or may not be--no real way to prove it either way). But it's interesting and captivating. He's been nominated by at least two top world scientists (so far) for the Nobel peace prize, so there must be something to it.


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## t2000kw (Jul 29, 2006)

As for these cheap T8's, they look much brighter, but part of the reason might be that we harvested some of the floating water lettuce plants. I do like their color also.


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## CincyCichlids (Oct 14, 2005)

Lowes has the nice 6500K T8 Bulb dual packs for I think $6.99. They give off pretty nice color and that color is usually endorsed by most plant people... Not too bad.

Now, if you consider overdriving them, I have a deal. I have a bunch of 4x32W T8 Ballasts. They were used for less than 6 months and work great. I'm selling them for $15ea. If you want me to redo the wiring I'll charge $10 for labor and wire ties, etc. So for $25, you can have the same ballast at Home Depot that cost $32.00-something + tax, installed and tested. Not too bad. I usually do this to burnt out shop lights that are just laying around taking up space.


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## t2000kw (Jul 29, 2006)

If I were in need of high output lighting, I would be interested. All of our tanks are NPTs, so a couple tubes at the standard output is more than adequate. I don't use CO2 or it might sound tempting.


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## CincyCichlids (Oct 14, 2005)

Honestly, I overdrive all of my tanks... even the ones with one java fern. I just like more light over my fish. A couple of over driven 10,000k T8s over a tank full of africans looks excellent.


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## t2000kw (Jul 29, 2006)

In an NPT, too much light can be a real problem.


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