General reef lighting question

[Dary421]

I have a 4 bulb tek t5 light set up which is hung by cables from the ceiling and is totally adjustable as to how far you can place the lights over the water ,..so how far above the water is a reasonable height? Thanks,Dary

 

[ccCapt]

4"-6" is probably the best. Too high up and you loose too much PAR. Too close and you get water splashing on them.

 

[Sqasnatch]

As close as possible, with safe air flow in-between, and no splashing

 

[Dary421]

Thanks for the responses,..one further question,..how does the lighting closeness effect the growth of algea or does it? ... Thanks again , Dary

 

[Sqasnatch]

I am a sole believer that algea growth has to do with mostly water quality

 

[BallinCrew10]

I am a sole believer that algea growth has to do with mostly water quality

To an extent. I agree it has a big part of it, but algae will not grow without light.

 

[Sqasnatch]

Yes I relize this. But what I meant was it doesn't matter how much light you have the algea will not get bad if you have good water. Unless less of coarse you are using sunlight.

 

[joy13]

Yes I relize this. But what I meant was it doesn't matter how much light you have the algea will not get bad if you have good water. Unless less of coarse you are using sunlight.

Why is it when there is an algae out break in my tank and the only thing I do is change the bulbs does it start dieing back with in a couple of days? I keep with the same 20% water change, food and light schedule.

 

[Sqasnatch]

I'm not really sure, I know that the color of light that the bulb puts of starts to get weak, perhaps the bulbs start putting off red light. I don't really know.

 

[MrPeon99]

As far as I know when bulbs start dieing they produce more red light which plants use to grow. New bulbs aren't producing the red light needed so the algae will die off. I use red leds to grow plants indoors (to cold to grow year round in ak) and those lights cause some of my plants to grow as much as 2-3 inches in a week. So I'm going to guess the same would be true for aquatic plants.

 

[Sqasnatch]

Right on the money

 

[Dary421]

Lighting is the one part of this whole aquatic world that I do not really understand,....I understand pumps,water,filters,skimmers etc,..but lights? I haven't a clue,...when I got my current lighting outfit,...I was advise by the sellers to get two blue bulbs ,a ac sun bulb and a 454 bulb,....they might as well been talking in Greek ,... I'm hoping that I eventually can pick up on some knowledge here and maybe somewhere down the line maybe get to the point that I could actually advise someone else,...but for now,...I'm all ears!!!

 

[Sqasnatch]

It is defenetly a toss up between lighting and water chemistry for me. But I find as I keep reading posts I understand more and more

 

[Gregcoyote]

Different bulbs age differently. The spectrum shifts, usually to the red part of the spectrum, the part corals could care less about. It is why I love LED lighting, they stay relatively flat until they burn out. Unfortunately, your eye cannot see this slow shift, but your corals can. The only solution is a regular bulb change and that's hard to make yourself do because the bulb visually looks fine.

As far as distance is concerned, the shape of the reflector will control the pattern of the illumination. Remember the light falls off as a function of a square root, so pulling the light back twice as far reduces the light a lot more than half.

 

[Dary421]

Different bulbs age differently. The spectrum shifts, usually to the red part of the spectrum, the part corals could care less about. It is why I love LED lighting, they stay relatively flat until they burn out. Unfortunately, your eye cannot see this slow shift, but your corals can. The only solution is a regular bulb change and that's hard to make yourself do because the bulb visually looks fine.

....so how does one actually know when it's time to change out your bulbs??? And for someone like me who knows nothing about 'em ,what do I look for??
There seems to be so many choices,..right now as I said in the original post I have two blue bulbs a sun bulb and a 454 bulb running,..all which means nothing to me,..is this a good setup or should I look to buy something else the next time? My bulbs are currently only two months old

 

[Gregcoyote]

Usually the bulb has the specs on ithe sleeve, or you can google it. Should have a rating for useful life.
If I were to invest in lights, I still like LED's because as I said earlier, they run pretty much flat on their long lifetime. Otherwise, I would guess 24 months would be a maximum.

 

[kdogg85]

I run mine 8 hrs a day and change them every 10 mos. This type of subject you will get a different answers. I will suggest trying ati bulbs. More par output for the money. That's what I was told and haven't looked back since.