T10 tubes?

Rip

on my 55 gallon tank, i just recently bought a new hood that would accomodate a 48 inch tube.

the hood i bought was Perfect a Lite by Marineland.
the tube it came with is an Eclipse Natural Daylight F40T10/48" Made in Thailand for Marineland.

is this the "daylight tube" that i want for plants? it doesn't say anywhere on there about what the kelvin rating is. i went to Home Depot to look for a 6500k tube, but they didn't seem to have any T10 tubes.

i bought this hood from PetSmart. i opened up the box on the floor in the store to make sure it was a 48 inch tube. while i was doing this, some worker came and asked if i needed help. i explained i was upgrading my lights, and just making sure it was the size i was looking for. i then asked him if the price of $32.99 was correct, and he said yes. when i got to the register, it rang up as $89.99. so i said "hold on a minute, this guy told me it was $32" so she called the same guy back over and he says "just give it to him for $32", so that's what i paid for it. i would hate to have to bring it back for something else, since i kind of got a steal on it.

Aqua Jon

I googled around a bit and found a thread on another forum. The poster had the same problem in trying to identify the rating. He came to the conclusion that the Eclipse daylight bulb, the one you have, is a 6500K bulb. So you should be good to go for plants. I can't guarantee that yours is exactly 6500K, but should be around 5000K-7000K (the rating of a "daylight" bulb. However, a daylight bulb may lack the blue/violet spectrum also needed for plant photosynthesis. Hard to know for certain. But I wouldn't toss it out just cause it lacks some blue/violet spectrum.

Byron

From the little I've seen, I agree. Marineland claims it is 6500K, so that should do the job, although I would want to see the spectrum graph to be absolute. I may try to dig a bit more.

As for the T10, that is unusual. The "T" refers to the tube diameter, and it is in eighths of an inch, so a T8 is 8/8 or 1 inch, a T12 is 12/8 or 1.5 inch, and a T10 would be 10/8 or 1.25 inch.

The fixture should hold a T8, provided the pin arrangement on the ends is the same as the T10. Nice thing about Home Depot is you can return stuff, so you could buy a T8 Alto Daylight Deluxe by Phillips in 48-inch, try it in the fixture, and if it fits and the light is different, keep it, or return it if it is the same (or doesn't fit). I've returned tubes to my Home Depot with no questions asked, I just said the light was not what I wanted in colour. This is how I found the one mentioned.

Byron.