Did I screw up? (Coralife vs Odyssea)
 

I ordered a Coralife 30" dual T5HO fixture from petmountain.com that is 62 total watts. It should be here in the morning, yet I found a quad odyssea t5ho fixture that will fit my tank for $30 cheaper and 94 watts. Now I do not particularly know much of this Odyssea brand. Supposedly this Coralife is supposed to be really good quality. So how bad did I jip myself on my lighting rig. It's a 20 gallon long tank.

I was in the same boat researching lights a couple weeks ago, all the info I could find says odyssea is a brand that is known for low cost low quality and changes brands every few years to dodge warranty issues, coralife is a "name brand" so your pretty safe with them but I decided on Deepblue Solarmax dual t5's because they come with the option to use 1 bulb or 2 with individual switches and an always on LED night light. They are a lot cheaper then coralife and i found a $30 off at petcareRX.com (100-30=70 for dual t5 high efficiency 48") I'm still very impressed with the quality but you cant go wrong with coralife so I'm glad you didn't get odyssea - supposedly there have been alot of fires caused by their lighting

And for a tank that size what you have is already way too much, HO T5 lighting puts too much light out for freshwater planted tanks that are that shallow, fine if your going for corals but from your other tanks I'm assuming freshwater, My plants are thriving with my HE bulbs in a 60 gallon and my total wattage is 56 (2 28)

I'm happy with the three Odyssea lights I have.

No issue with the fixture, but you have a lot of light over a fairly small tank. Are you planning on CO2 diffusion and daily dosing of nutrients?

Byron.

Right now I'm doing root tabs, DIY co2, and flourish. I'm also only running one 6700k bulb at 31w until I get a pressurized system and figure out the nutrients I need to dose.
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