This is a post by a member of our reef society (madison reef society). I found this very interesting and thought i would share it with all of you. This is just copied and pasted.
Lighting (thread name)
On reading the earlier thread on lighting I though maybe is time for me to come clean on my non-conventional lighting setup on my display tank.
I am using 6500K daylight spectrum household compact fluorescent bulbs that screw into standard light bulb sockets. I look for them to go on sale at Walmart or Menards. If I find them on sale I can get them for ~$1.5 each. I think they are ~26 Watts with the claim that they are equivalent to a 100 W incandescent bulb. I use 16 of these over a 135 gallon tank along with two VHO Actinics.
For the first year I ran only the daylights and had ricordea and SPS in the tank. They all thrived, good color and growth. I slowly increased the amount of actinic over the subsequent years as I expanded the tank inhabitants to include representatives from every possible niche. LPS, anemones, SPS, Tridacna of all flavors and a few soft corals. All have been thriving. My current lighting has been in place for almost 2 years now. The 6500K Walmart daylight bulbs have been on the tank for ~4 years. This lighting was an experiment that proved to work well.
I have no objection to MH or T5 except for the cost of MH, to purchase and operate. I was really just looking for a cheaper do it your self thing.
For the first year or two when someone would ask me what type of lighting I was running I just said "it is experimental." I did not want to listen to various fish store employees or others tell me how wrong my lighting was and what I should not keep.
When I started in the hobby, a couple of days ago, there were no bulbs made for reef tanks. We used philups actinics with GE daylight, chroma 50s and If I remember right chroma 60s- typically in the 4' 40W flavor.
On my early reef tank I ran two HO 60W actinics with four 40 watt bulbs over a 90 gal tank. Nobody even sold wet/drys you had to make your own. And Imagine, I think there was only one protein skimmer manufacturer.
Sorry for reminiscing, my point is that we were able to keep our corals and other inverts alive and healthy using techniques other than the many "must have," without the current cliche' "you might sustain your coral but it will not thrive unless". Don't get me wrong we have come a long way but techniques seem to be "in fashion" until some new thing comes along. Few of the techniques I employ are considered current best practice. Though I am always looking for simpler, less expensive and more effective ideas. This forum has been a source of several - Thanks.
Mark
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here is a link to a recent set of photos of the tank. If you scroll through them the whole tank is shown in three consecutive photos. I think the link below is the first in the series.
Photo's of tank
I change the bulbs on a rotating basis and try to change them every 4 months to be on the safe side. They likely keep there spectrum a bit longer but they are not expensive. I have noticed that if they are older bulbs, maybe 6 months they are not as blue in spectrum as the fresh bulb. They tend to yellow with age.
These cheap lights do their job. I watch my corals to for indications that my water chemistry is good. They are my best indicators of whether my maintance, water changes, and such are lacking. I usually tell people that whether they have T5 MH or compacts they keep just about anything and that water chemistry is the trick. I have noticed some animals look better under the MH in my frag tank and vice versa for others but most things are healthy regardless of which tank they are in.
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I am not one for re posting something, but seeing this was on another forum i thought it would be ok. If any of you mods have a problem with me posting this please pm me.