Lighting Problems

I just discovered that my actinic bulb is not working. Upon further inspection I discovered that the bulb was fine but the fixture is no longer powering that side.

The light that I own is a dual 96w fixture with one 12000K daylight and one true actinic. My tank is a 20g long with max depth of 12."

My problem is that it may be months before I can afford to replace the fixture and I am worried about not running actinic lighting during this time. Will the 12000K be enough, and enough of the right wavelengths to keep everything happy? How much time do I have before I must fix this problem?

 

ive ran many a tank with just halides and no actinics. if your just running actinics then you may need to break down and replace it depending on what type of corals your housing.

 

ive been running my tank on halides only for the last 4 weeks. 14000k

you should be ok.

You can replace the 12000k bulb with 14000k for now

 

you can buy a ballast for pretty cheap and just rewire the fixture. You can get a Fulham workhorse 7 that will be able to fire up both of your 96 watt PCs for like $40 give or take or..... you can get a Fulham workhorse 5 that will fire up just the one lamp that needs the replacement ballast for around $30.

 

Yeah, I might do that. Luckily I have an uncle that is an electrician. He is checking to see if he can get the ballast for me on the cheap! I hope so. I am always nervous about rewiring flourescents though. I don't want to burn my house down.

Thanks for the direction though, I will do some research on that ballast and see if any of my local stores might carry it.

 

they are very simple to wire....i can always walk you through it if you need help and you can also go to fulhams website and get easy to read wiring diagrams.