A question about improving the lighting

I currently have a juwel rio 125 aquarium which comes with the standard 2 x 18W lighting. The only problem with this is that you cant grow many plants with this level of lighting.

When i went to buy 2 x 30W lights, giving me 2 watts per gallon, i noticed the size of the tubes for the 30W lights were 36 inches. This however wouldnt fit into my juwel lighting fixture.

Has anyone any ideas how to get around this. I know its quite a popular tank so i'm hoping someone has experience of upgrading the lighting.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Paul.

add juwel reflectors, supposedly doubling the light output
also change the juwel tubes to better ones as the ones supplied are usless for planted tanks.
I'll see If I can find the post about it

EDIT
here it is
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=98205&hl=juwel

I have 6 tubes in my Rio 125.

The original 2 on Juwel light-bar. 2 x 25W 30" in front of the Juwel light-bar and 2 x 18W 24" behind. The centre strenghting brace and light cables keep the tubes perfectly balanced. I use 4 reflectors, 2 of which cover 4 tubes. It sounds complicated so I'll try to post a pic.

Here's a quick pic of tank anyway (any excuse to show off!)

Here's how it's set-up.

Obviously you don't have to go that far. To start with I added 1 x 25W 30" with good results.

As Wolf suggest you will be better to start off with buying good quality tubes and reflectors. You should notice a vast improvement with these alone. Here's some good tubes available in the UK

Dennerle - Special-Plant 3000K Warm, yellow/orange
Hagen - Life-Glo 6700K Bright, cool white
Arcadia - Freshwater Lamp 7500K Cool white/green
Zoo Med - Ultra-Sun 6500K Bright Cool white
Interpet - Triton/Triplus 8300K Bright white/purple
Interpet - Daylight Plus 6500K Cool white

Thanks for the info guys. I had already adopted the balancing lights on the strengthing brace Although I wasn't sure how safe it was.

Guess i'll need to buy a new set of lights