NewburyNewbie
New Member
I have a 28 gallon sump/refugium. At least it will be a refugium soon. Just curious, what type of lighting do you have set up for your refugium?
I bought a clip-on light from home depot and put a plant grow bulb in it.Works great.
I am trying to make sure I do this as cost effective as possible so that my electric bill doesn't blow up. Won't I need different bulbs like my display tank? How long are lights typically on for the refugium?
The clamp fixture won't make much of a difference. I use an old light fixture from an iguana tank I had years ago. The thing that will save energy is the type of bulb. A CFL (compact fluorescent bulb) will reduce energy AND heat transfer to the tank water, two huge benefits. I use a 13W daylight spectrum (6500 kelvin) bulb on my fuge, it has grown grape caulerpa (spelling?) and chaeto with no problems. The trick to using grow lights is spacing the light close to the macro algae as the light looses energy very quickly when it isn't close to the plant life. Make sure your set-up is very safe, I use a Plexiglas shield to make SURE my light wont accidentally fall into the water and kill me or my livestock. For this reason you should ALWAYS have a GFCI outlet or plug in model protecting everything. Good luck and be safe.I wanted to have microalgae there. I'll have some live rock as well. Does it make a difference which clamp on fixture I use? I think i had one for a red eared turtle several years ago. These are actually energy efficient?