Lighting

[Harry Gross]

As I'm rebuilding what was once a completely neglected 100 gallon SW reef I'm now at the stage of rebuilding the lighting system....learning things like>the 4 flourescent tubes were'nt the correct ones...which probably caused the demise of ALL corals...They ARE all dead !!
I am currently using the lights off of a 10 gallon tank...opening all windowblinds in the a.m.'s....for the NATURAL sunlight benifits.. and the blacklight from same ..(.therein closeing blinds @ dusk) inadequet at best....I Know.
-----------------------------------
I recently had the ballist manufactorer inspect/service the (fairly-new) ballist so as to BE SURE its all-good.
Now its time for purchasing new tubes.
The origional system consists of 4-4' long flourescent tubes which apparently ran on some sort of timer system..(household lighting timer)...which are installed in the wooden tanklid....much the same as many which I've viewed on this site.
Obviously I need to purchase tubes which produced proper UV's..etc. Do these (same) tubes also kick-down at night for the night-lighting effect???Or is it possible that 2 of these tubes were ORIGIONALLY designated for daytime lighting...and two for nightime lighting.( would two of the CORRECT TUBES be adequet enough daytime (and nightime) lighting to sustain most coral life...so as to enable me to start restocking the project with corals...enenemies without fear of killing anybody ??
When purchasing tubes...what kinda numbers should I be looking for on the tubes or packageing?Are there such things as a per gallon...wattage equasion??....Daytime watts/UV's...vs Nightime ??

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Your tube wattages must be matched to your ballasts. Whoever inspected your ballasts should be able to tell you what wattage bulbs you can use.

The tubes don't "kick down" to provide the day/dusk routine. To do this, you need some of your lights to be "daylight" and some of your lights to be "actinic". The actinic bulbs are the "blacklight" bulbs. Most folks run both their daylight and actinic at the same time for the majority of their lighting period. They'll then turn off the daylight and only run actinic for an hour or so in the morning and night for that dawn/dusk effect. It's really just for looks... don't think the corals or fish really care.

 

[wun68]

So we don't really need the actinic lights?

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

I meant the dusk/dawn effect was just for looks... not the actinics themselves. Having just your actinics on for approximately 10% of your total lighting time really doesn't do much photosynthesis-wise.

 

[melosu58]

Moved to General hardware and equipment discussion.