are flourescent usable?

are flourescent lights actually usable for marine tanks? lets say for corals?

 

Of course t5 HO, VHO, and power compact(compact flourescent) are flourescent bulbs.

 

Sure they are. I would go for T5HO.

 

Technically, yes. You can find standard fluorescent 10,000K, 20,000K and 50/50 "reef" bulbs. However, you will be highly limited on the types of coral you can keep, ensuring that you only add very low-light species.

In practice, I wouldn't bother. PCs and T5s aren't that expensive.

Cheers

 

what people used to do is use around 8 NO bulbs for 50 gallon tank to keep corals.

 

i guess I'm gonna get fried. yes you can use t12 and t8 standard output to grow some corals. in fact i had better growth of some of my soft corals when i was using 2 6700 daylight t12 bulbs i got at home depot over my 55 gal. tank, then i do now with high output 10k t5. bigger ain't always better i say match the lighting to the coral your planing on keeping. and for those ho want to flame me just look on the garf site he uses 6700 t8 bulbs from home depot on some of his frag tanks.

 

Keep in mind depth of tanks when choosing lighting; you can grow a lot of stuff with cheap bulbs if your frag tank is only 6" deep :

 

All my reef tanks are lit with NO fluorescent lamps.
I use GE Daylight 6500K paired with Philips Actinic 03's.
I have no problems keeping any LPS, hydnaphora, clams, and anemones. I don't keep sps.
I've been doing this since January of 94.

 

t5 ho