Siejuban Posted July 25, 2003 Share Posted July 25, 2003 If I buy the coralife 1x96W complete hood for MiniBow 5, is it too much light? The hood is 20" long by the way. Since I have no tool and material and not good in DIY, I can't make my own custom hood, so I will need to buy a complete hood instead. I had look for the CSL 15" 2x32, it is a good one, but pretty expense, it is $169, $70 more than the Coralife 20". I have checked the setup of the 5g nano listed on this site, but they don't show much detail how they make their lighting system, so how do the 5g minibow owner here got their light? Link to comment
dickwayne Posted July 25, 2003 Share Posted July 25, 2003 Why not a sinlge 32w? I think that's what most of the 7g minibow users have. 96watts on a 5g is def. too much light IMO. Getting this light might be cool though, if you want to spend more money! http://www.hellolights.com/70wunmam85ba.html Link to comment
bamann345 Posted July 25, 2003 Share Posted July 25, 2003 I would also go with the 32 watt single bulb for a 5 bow. 96 watts is WAAYYY TOOOO MUCH light! Link to comment
Siejuban Posted July 25, 2003 Author Share Posted July 25, 2003 Thanks! So, 32watt is enough for a 5g minibow. Link to comment
zizmans Posted July 25, 2003 Share Posted July 25, 2003 96 will fry your tank. 96 w or for penetrating like 40" of water. (Hey Val!) Link to comment
SteveC Posted July 25, 2003 Share Posted July 25, 2003 I may be wrong but I doubt a 96w compact flourescent bulb will penetrate 40" of water very well. I think people use metal halides for that kind of stuff. But anyhow... Is there really such a thing as having too much light? That is, in terms of what you can realistically put over a tank, since obviously a fission bomb can generate "too much light", among other things. People do put those 96w PCs over 10g tanks and do very well. Others complain about PCs being too damn dark and put metal halides over 10g tanks. I think it's more an issue of whether the light will generate too much heat for your tank. PCs don't run very hot and you can always put a fan in the hood. Has anyone tried putting that much light over 5 gallons? Or is everyone going by "conventional wisdom"? A 96 watt PC over a Minibow 5 would be pretty bright, but it's not going to be brighter than the sun, which is what it's supposed to be a substitute for. It's probably not going to be any brighter than a typical 10g/MH setup either. You may just have to acclimate your corals more carefully to that level of light. I dunno, I'm still a noob, but I'm not convinced that this would fail. Everything I've read says more light is better, unless you have animals that come from very low light places. If I were you and I thought I could get a 96w PC over a 5g Minibow with minimal effort, I'd be pretty tempted to try it and grow all those light-hungry corals that I probably can't keep in my 10g with 72w of PCs. The only reason I wouldn't do it is that it sounds like work since the Minibow 5 is so small. Link to comment
surfy Posted July 26, 2003 Share Posted July 26, 2003 96 watts will be fine but you will have more evap and heat to deal with, you also wouldn't want any low light corals since 5 gallons dosn't leave much room for shade. IMO I would just get a 32w which will be fine for most things and it will cut down on the evap and heat. Link to comment
westkyracer Posted July 27, 2003 Share Posted July 27, 2003 I have 2 13w over my 5.5 and everything is doing fine. So 32 would be fine if you are just going to put softies and Zoo's. If you are going to put other more light dependant items in your tank I would look into a 70w Metal Halide double ended. Link to comment
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