adequet lighting ??

[Harry Gross]

OK....while looking at alot of the tank photos posted throughout the A/A I've noticed that some of these BIGGER tanks have LESS lighting than mine !!(???) I currently have a 100 gal which is sporting 4-4' long 40 watt bulbs in the top. Lately there have been some ballist problems ( the new ballists have burnt out twice now over a short period of time) and I'm wondering/hoping that I could get away with downsizing the amount of tubes.. without loosing necessary lighting.
Is there such a thing as a wattage-per gallon ratio ??

 

[ccCapt]

I think you may have misread something. You have 160w of normal output fluorescent over a 100g tank? I don't think anyone here has less light than that and still is able to keep corals. Going by the antiquated watts/gal, you have 1.6w/g. That's not enough for any coral. Put 4 more of those bulbs up and you can keep some soft corals.

As a comparison, I have 925w over my 125.