Paging Fishfreek: Lighting Question

[Spoon]

I saw in one of your posts you mentioned that too much light could be bad for coraline. I am about to make some adjustments to a couple of tanks (including light and filtration) and I was just wondering how much is too much.

Several of us maintain a 20 gallon reef tank at work and we have 30W of flourescent light on the tank. We dose regularly with Calcium and Carbonate and the coraline is OK. We had to move the tank recently (new office building) and we have room to put up another tank (45 Gal)

I think we are going to make the 45 a FO (for now) and upgrade the lights on the 20G. What would be a good amount of light for a 20 gal with polyps and coraline? I saw some reasonably priced 65W PC lights on Ebay. Would 65 be a good wattage?

Also for future upgrades, I was looking at 192 W lights for the 45G tank. Could we get away with 96W? The tank is about 2' tall.

Thanks for your help.

 

[jackdp]

Although not FF I have a 20 gallon tank I can comment on. The tank is over a year old and is a full reef with LS and LR. Up until a few weeks ago I was only running 2x55 watt PC lamps. 1 10K and 1 actinic. I observed that even in this lower lighting that the deeper pink coralline only grew in the dimmer areas of the tank and on the under sides of the LR. On the glass in and brighter areas the coralline would be a duller pink and green color. I have just recently added a 175 watt MH light to the setup and switched the PC 's to all actinic so I can't really comment the brighter setup affecting coralline growth. I think for a 20 that 65W PC is a good place to start for FOWLR if you don't see a big improvement you can always add another 65W to the setup. For a 45G tank depending on depth 96W may not penetrate very far. Sorry if I stepped on FF's toes

 

[Spoon]

All comments are welcome! I just didn't have space to make that clear in the title of the post.

Thanks for the info jack. I appreciate it.

I will have to take some measurements, but I wonder if I would be able to put two custom sealife PC's on top of a 20G. That's the light I've seen on Ebay. I have one for my planted 65 FW and I really like it.

Thanks again...

 

[fishfreek]

I got excellent coraline growth with 2 X 36W PC bulbs on my 20 tall. I upgraded to 2 X 55W PC bulbs and still saw great coraline growth on my 20.

Dont be sorry. Had someone not linked me to this in AIM I would not have seen it till sometime this afternoon.

 

[reefrunner69]

Different species of coraline will do better under lower light and some will do better under intense light, just depends on what species are in the tank. It took me several months for the coraline to take off in my 20g long, with 175W MH and 2 X 32W PC actinics, possibly it was that long before I put something in the tank that had the spores for a higher intensity loving coraline. Now my tank is covered, literally

 

[Sparky]

What would be a good lighting setup for a 125 gallon tank withfish, live rock and anemone? I have right now 2 Marine Glo flourescent bullbs spanning the tank. 36 Inches each.

I was thinking of building a new hood and placing (4) 4 foot flourescents down the center and (2) 175 watt MH at each end. Is that too much?

Do you use regular MH bulbs? Or are there special bulbs that you must purchase.

 

[kidkameleon3]

I had a 10 gallon with 30w (1 thricomatic and 1 50/50) and the rock was covered completly in dark purple and greens. I ean solid sheets of coralline looked fake almost

 

[kidkameleon3]

here is a pic of one of the rocks from the 10 only a few days old in my 55 still looking nice

 

[mrrrkva]

Sparky,
I would say that 3X175 MH and 2 X160 VHO wouldnt be too much, there are lots of people that have 3X250 that would say that is not too much. What kind of corals are you keeping?? Make sure you run fans. Heat is a major concern. I would use Ushio 10k 175 mh. You can get them at Marinedepot or any major fish store or mail order place