Hey garyfla, Although I never got the chance to try them (shop lights) I do hear people saying very good things about them, also, next time your in an office building and you see the "plant person" (theres one in every office building!LOL!) notice how well THIER plants are growing!? and what do they use????shop lights! unless your in one of the new "green" buildings, which I think is a great idea thats finally being put to use! I owned a set till someone told me that they were no good and like a silly newbe I went out and bought the daybulbs and all the rest of that stuff, they worked out well, but I still wonder about shop lights!?

Hi
Wish I could find the flourex lights somewhere. They worked very well for a long time. i can get the parts to fix it but it costs more than the whole fixture.
Went ahead and got a 4 foot shop light along with some daylight tubes.
I think I might convert this back into an aquarium as the new setup is doing fantastic and I have so much more room out there.
gary

Im glad to hear that the new set up is going good, please let me know two things, 1, let me know how the lights work out, 2, when are you going to post pics of your new set up!? LOL! I would like to see what it looks like! =)

Hi
The shop lights were generally what I used until I found the Florex fixtures.Still have one left that was setup in

98. Suspect it won't last much longer. they were very powerful and cheap. but the bulbs cost 9 bucks and you could buy the whole fixture for 25.
    I've been using those disposable cameras and not one of the pix cam out during construction.Whole disc was blank.
    Of course everything has grown considerably now.In fact the whole wall is covered lol. Really tough to get pix of the inside of the tank.Too many reflections and the flash
    just bounces back. Maybe I should try some pix in the dark??
    I erred in making the background mostly black should have went with a light gray. I think it would have dulled the reflections. have had some adhesion problems with the foam at the bottom of of the water tank. Guess two feet of water is too much pressure. All the submerged plants have really taken off even though there is dense plantings from above,casting heavy shadows. The Lace plant even flowered
    and produced sprouts from viable seeds !!! Don't think any will survive the heat but the parent plant is still growing.
    and ,so far, shows no signs of going dormant.
    Anyway ,I'm not too thrilled with any of the pix of course it's too big to get all in one frame.
    Hoping the new ones will be better.
    gary