Which Light Unit?

[Betta5]

Hey, Im going to buy a seperate over the tank lighting unit for my fish only tank. My room gets very warm in the summer and im hoping that will help keep the temps down, aswell as the T5 bulbs helping any algae I buy.

Thing is, my tank at the moment is 100cm. The first light unit is 85cm, and the next one up is 120cm. Which do I go for?

There is a good chance that in the very neer future I will be upgrading to a 55gallon which is 120cm long which means the 120cm could transfer staight over and fit perfectly. But until then I would have a light unit that looks dumb on the tank.

Do I go for the smaller one, or save my self some money later on and get the big one but it look dumb on my tank?

If that makes any sense, please help lol
thanks

 

[Morri]

If upgrade is definate I would get the 120 and live with it being to long for now saves spending on new lights again

 

[Betta5]

Yeah I think I might have to do that. It will force me to upgrade quickly aswell or I will have wasted money. Its just things like that really annoy me, im sure its an OCD, im not going to be able to sleep knowing its to big lol

 

[drsquirrel]

You can get light controllers with end caps, technically these could fit any length bulb - although I am not sure if you could buy a 54w unit and run 39w bulbs off of it, it should only draw the amps it needs but because of the ballast I am not sure how it will act.

If this was correct - you could buy the larger ballast now, and upgrade bulb size at a later date and you only lose the cost of the original 85cm bulbs (though they will die sometime anyway so it's not all lost). Should let someone else confirm this first.



What's the width of the tank? Might be able to get them in diagonal lol! (unlikely though, the tank would need to be 66cm wide to fit 120 diagonal).




/edit - sorry I just noticed you said over tank lighting (I assume you mean some kind of pendant style setup).