So at the lowes near me, and they had 5000k "sunshine" light bulbs. I picked up one to run in tandem with the uvb bulb I had on my 30g tank that I dumped a whole bunch of plants into.

So I'm not sure which or if it was just the combination of the two, but after a few weeks, I need to dig out or trim or do something with these plants that are in there.

In the tank is currently peace lillies, hygro (sunset and giant) some java moss, 4 leaf clovers and something I think called baby's breath. Everything is growing crazy.

I'm not sure if it's the best solution if your keeping rare or difficult plants, but for the basics I have, my total cash outlay was around $35 bucks, (vs the $100 for the commercial systems) and from the reviews I've seen about store bought plant lighting rigs it seems to do just as good a job while being way cheaper.

Next test is going to be with two "sunshine" bulbs and see how that works out.

That sounds interesting Let me know how it works out!

They are GE Sunshine F15 Bulbs btw. I got 18 inch ones for my test, but they have them up to 4 feet. (and down to 6 inches for that matter)

Next time I go I want to see if they have any bulbs that are listed any closer to the 6500k range since that's what the store bought rigs use.

Another thing, which I'm sure makes a difference since it does with the turtles, is that the lid is just a large holed mesh, so the plants aren't getting light filtered by any glass.

My plants seem to grow faster with the bulbs over the water and not the glass.

Be on the look out for my DIY lighting thred. I stripped the insides of a light out, spray painted the inside with white heat resistant paint, attached a couple of light sockets, screwed in 2 CFL bulbs and ba da bing ba da boom I got my self a new light!

Get that DIY thread going...whoo hoo

Tomorrow Ill post it right now its 12:30am and the misses is sleeping. I dont want to wake the sleeping bear!

Perhaps I should post more of my freaky custom built stuff in the diy thread. I always forget that I'm the insane one who'd rather build something cheaper than buy it.

It should be cool for CFLs but be careful with that heat paint. I haven't seen it do much of anything protection wise on anything past a 100w bulb. In my experience aluminum works far better.