5.5 Gallon Tank: Lighting Argument With The Wife

[Piti]

my wife and i are having an argument about what type of lighting we should use for a 5.5gallon tank and we also have a cheap budget. should we get an underwater tank light?? or an LED clip on light out side the tank?? or should we get a hood with light included for the tank?? any opinions?? my wife thinks the underwater light would be better if we got three, two for the corners and one in the middle, it's a low light as well. i think an outside light would be better. we want to use the 5.5 also just for a betta, so which one do you think would be better and why??

 

[Mikaila31]

Anything but the underwater lights!

I would go for a hood with a incandescent socket and use a spiral compact, then grow some plants

 

[Piti]

That's kinda what I thought. Is it worth sticking to a LFS or will a home hardwear store work just as good (if not cheeper) then.

Can you also explain why for my sake.

 

[KittyKat]

+1 anything but underwater!

Cheap LEDs usually give less light per kWh (so more expensive for the same amount of light). I would probably go for a cheap power compact (the sort that are double tubes in one).

 

[Mikaila31]

That's kinda what I thought. Is it worth sticking to a LFS or will a home hardwear store work just as good (if not cheeper) then.

Can you also explain why for my sake.

There is nothing natural at all about underwater lights. Light should come from above the waterline shining down on the fish. Underwater ones are ugly and add more unnatural clutter to the tank.

If you want to be cheap a lamp from a home store will certainly work. Get one that has a gooseneck and pick up a 14 watt DAYLIGHT bulb to go with it. The fixture should support one of those energy-saving spiral compacts that twist in. Then add some low-medium light plants or it will probably cause algae lol.

 

[waterdrop]

Our little 5.5 is like that. There's a hinged flat glass lid and then there is just a small stylish desk lamp, one of those hinged ones with a weighted base and a couple of long thin black wires and then a tiny 20w little light fairly high up over the tank. This tank has no live plants and so we just turn that light on for viewing and off otherwise.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

Almost any lamp will work for a tiny 5.5 gallon tank. I favor fluorescents because they end up being much cheaper to operate than an incandescent providing the same amount of light. I have only one tank that small and it is simply lit by the room lights whee I keep it. When I am home and the room light is on, the Betta simplex female in the tank gets artificial lighting. The rest of the time she gets only the small amount of natural light that reaches her tank. This has been going on for many months now with no ill effects.

 

[waterdrop]

Our little 5.5 is very similar, just natural light indirectly from a big window across the room but then the little desk lamp that can be turned on if one particularly wants to view the fish that are in there (often I just let fish from the shop spend their first weeks, months or year in that tank before they get to go to the display tank.) I get a kick out of always switching the little light on a period prior to feeding. They get to know what this means!

~~waterdrop~~