diy lighting

[vulture165]

I've got a question about installing lighting for a 50 gallon freshwater tank. Dimensions are 48 x 16, and I've built a wooden hood with roughly 5" of clearance above the glass. I want to install flourescent lighting and am wondering if anyone hasadvice on this. Is there an easy kit I can purchase? (I was looking at the ballast kit for sale at aquariumpros, but am not sure if it will work for me.) Anyone who has done this before?

thanks, Ross

[Nooboon]

Hi Ross, welcome.

As you can see I have moved this post to the product questions forum. I'm sure you will get a good reply from Dave here. He has been a bit busy lately though so you might have to wait a while.

Your choice of lighting will be influenced by whether you intend to have live plants or not and the depth of your tank (light intensity deminishes rapidly through water).
In a heavily planted tank you may even want to try power compact lighting.

Let us know your intentions.

[AquariumPro]

Hello and welcome to the boards! I already answered you via email, but if you have any other questions, please reply here in this thread and I will be automatically notified.

Thanks Nooboon!

[vulture165]

hey, thanks for the quick reply!

To answer your questions, my tank is 16" deep
(48 x 15 x 16), and I probably won't want live plants. I want an easy method of installing lighting to my hood. The 2 light ballast and end cap kit seems like exactly what i want, but i'm not sure whether it needs additional equipment (eg. an existing light).

thanks,
ross

[AquariumPro]

Hi:

The Wizard Ballast by Energy savers (Wizard Ballast (http://aquariumpros.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=ENE00902) ), comes with four lamp clamps that can be mounted to your wood canopy.

You simply attach these to your canopy, then clamp your lamps into them. You then attach the endcaps to the lamps and place your ballst below the stand or mount it to whatever you wish. Plug in the ballast, turn on the switch and you are done.