T8 Ballast Question :|

[FWDSB]

A picture is worth a thousand words and all that..............

I was previously using the ballast to power 2x 18w 590mm T8's but am I correct in thinking I could also use this ballast to drive a pair of the shorter 15w tubes or 1 of each e.g 1x15w 1x18w?
I ask a I was just looking at a way to squeeze a bit more light into my tank without spending any cash, current tank is a Juwel trigon 190.
here is a link to the tank http://www.juwel-aquarium.co.uk/Pro...n-190-uk-black.html#!juwel-000000000000016570
As you can see fom the link the dimensions of the tank make it a little hard to incorporate additional lighting of the same size as the current 2x18w T8's so I was thinking of attaching 1x 15w T8 to the back lid cover and another on the front Lid cover.
Will this add significantly to what I already have or not worth the effort?
Any input greatly appreciated although I can feel my idle hands twitching so by the time you are reading this I may already be hacking my lids up

 

[FWDSB]

Well in case anyone ever searches this question the answers are in my experience that ballast will happily run either 1x 18wT8 590mm long or 2x 18wT8 590mm or 1x 15wT8 435mm or 2x 15wT8 435mm but not a mixture of one of each have to be matching tube lengths hope this helps someone

 

[ian_m]

Or you could just add one of these which is 100% compatible with the Juwel lighting fixtures and will give you a monsterous amount of light. 4 x T5 HO 28W....
http://www.iquaticsonline.co.uk/aqu.../iquatics-aqualumi-universal-4-tube-70cm.html

Your 18W T8 would be about 1000lumen, each T5 HO is 2000lumen, so now have 8000lumen....nice. but need to control carefully with spot on CO2 or else will algae'ify everything...

 

[FWDSB]

Or you could just add one of these which is 100% compatible with the Juwel lighting fixtures and will give you a monsterous amount of light. 4 x T5 HO 28W....
http://www.iquaticsonline.co.uk/aqu.../iquatics-aqualumi-universal-4-tube-70cm.html

Your 18W T8 would be about 1000lumen, each T5 HO is 2000lumen, so now have 8000lumen....nice. but need to control carefully with spot on CO2 or else will algae'ify everything...

Nice to see that at least someone is doing some retrofit stuff aimed at the juwels I love my Juwel tanks build quality but it is so awkward to maintain its tidy look when upgrading the lights, but to be honest like most of the stuff available for the juwel tanks it seems a bit pricey at £125 for a bare bones system........I am always looking to do things on a budget as unfortunately the poor fishies always end up on the bottom of the list for treats and new toys.
So far those supplementry t8's which in the end had to be the shorter 435mmish tubes 15w down to space constraints on the rear hood have ended up costing just the price of the tubes so around £25. The hope is to use those lights to provide slightly less light to the tank at the moment as my CO2 has been down for awhile so algae has taken over and the plants are a shadow of their former glory(violins anyone), so until funds allow the completion of my fire extinguisher CO2 I was hoping to get away with reducing the light levels.
Hopefully once the CO2 is up and running again I will be able to use the 2x15w early int the day then have the 15w's and 18w's on for a couple of hours middle of the photoperiod and then either back down to the 2x 15w's for rest of day or maybe use the 2x 18ws for the afternoon shift.... hopefully that makes sense