sufficient lighting?

[appleton]

Hi reefers,I recently added some shrooms and colt coral to my 100gal (18"deep)and in the process of getting a frogspawn.I built a canopy and installed 4t5-54watts and 2t5-54watts atinics-all 10,000k.Should that do the trick?

[mr_X]

sounds like it should. are they properly reflected? individual reflectors on each lamp? what retro kits did you use? what brand lamps?

[melosu58]

I think also it should be enough. Interested to see the answers to Larry`s questions.

[appleton]

I am not using reflectors.The entire hood is lined with Mylar.The kit i'm using is one from a hydroponics company,There are a few reefers fron the area that shop there due to the lower prices compared to the LFS.btw that brand name was Sun Blaster.Thanks for the response guys.

[mr_X]

then i don't think it's going to reflect like true reflectors would. you'll lose a good amount of light with this set up, but i think frogspawn should be ok.

[cabezon]

the shrooms will grow very large. i find the less light, the more the corals expand.

I have 4 t5s and a 200 watt cfl fixture. You should do fine. I would at some point look at individual reflectors as your usable PAR will almost double with a good reflector.

[cmor1701d]

The beauty of T5 bulbs is that they are thin enough to allow for an individual, highly polished parabolic reflector around each bulb. It is the reflector that puts 95% or more of the bulb's output into the tank. Lacking that type of reflector is paramount to using normal output tubes. Very little light is getting into the tank and only low light species will thrive.

Take a look at getting some IceCap T-5 Reflectors, or some Sunlight Supply TEK II T5 Retrofit Reflectors

[appleton]

I will definately look into some reflectors.Maybe a little x-mas present to myself. :-0 maybe drop a hint to the mrs.