Lighting Question

[laxbograt]

I have a 55 gallon long that I am currently running 2 x 65 watt compact florescent 50/50. I was at my dad's house and noticed he has an old light setup with 2 x 30 watt florescent tube bulbs, one is a blue marine glo and the other is a white power glo. Would this be an improvement to my current setup or no real improvement.

[fihsboy]

No, those lights would be worse. Those bulbs are generally used over freshwater tanks. Keep the CF bulbs, eventually if you want to hold corals you will want to upgrade to T5HO or halides. CF bulbs will hold ricordea and will grow corraline, but wont support any hard corals.

[fox2589]

i agree,you will need t5HO with indivisual reflectors or halide for anything serious..-drew

[laxbograt]

Do you think adding the two 30 w to my setup would help? I have plenty of room for both.

[fihsboy]

They are T12 bulbs....or T8 bulbs, either way they arent going to do much. I would just keep the PC's up there so it looks clean......but thats me. If you wanted to you could....but its not going to make a noticable difference in the par values, which is what you need to be aware of when trying to keep corals. As far as the tanks looks.....it might look better, you could try it for that, but it wont be enough to affect corals.