will this light setup work..

[swebob]

I have a standard 8w light on my 15 gal tank and want to get better lighting.

 

I just found online a Corallife mini Aqua lite that has a 9W true actinic 03 blue power compact bulb and a 9W 10,000K daylight compact bulb..

 

Will this be enough light for my 15 gal and the live rock i have in it and if I want to have a piece of coral.

[vyger]

Not enuf light for anything but the tank and the live rock!!! I would say even low light mushrooms are going to need way more light than that..Read thru these forums and you should get an idea of how much light you need depending on what you want to keep in the tank..The live rock doesn't need any light but on a standard 15gal which is 24 in long and about 13in deep ..I would go with around 60 watts or more even for low light stuff. But everone has their own idea on how much light you need.. I have a 6 gal Eclipse and I have one of those 18 watt mini aqua's along with the stock light which gives me 24 watts. Not very much light but I only have low light mushrooms and pollups which all do very well..I also have 4in of live sand on the bottom which brings everything alot closer to the light. Don't waste your money ,,wait till you have enough to put a decent light on the tank.

[ApocalypticSurf6]

yea I have 80w on my 10 gallon, I would say get about the same if your going to keep lowlight to medium at most, remember you want about at least 4 watts to a gallon at least, but go iv noticed a lot got with around 6 so yea 80w il give you a good in between

[bill33]

i gots a 96 watt power quad on my 10

[tonym]

I have a 150w MH HQI Pendant on my 10g and it's just perfect.

[yawny]

I was wondering about the poster who added a Coralife mini 18w to an Eclipse 6. I have one of these myself and it's currently a rubble/frag tank that doubles as a private retirement home for the poor damsel that broke in my display tank (didn't get along with the Clowns and Royal Gramma...beginner mistake).

 

Anyway the stock lighting in an Eclipse is obviously weak. I put some polyp frags in there and they did ok for a couple of weeks but now they're kind of unhappy. I'd like to upgrade the lighting though I'm not really up for building a whole custom canopy.

 

I will put in shrooms, polyps and maybe a Ric or two if I can get mine to split again.

 

When you put in the 18k, did you have to move the stock lighting and/or modify the existing canopy? I assume you removed the stock filter? How about ventilation, did you cut additional holes? The stock canopy has almost no ventilation.

 

Thanks -- John

[vyger]

If your talking about me I did remove the stock filtration and put a HOB AC mini on the back, I just cut the back part of the hood . I put the entire fixture (Coralife Mini )over the hole after removing the small cover on top. All my mushrooms and pollups did fine and I even had a hammer coral that did well. My avatar to the left was taken when i had that light setup...Now I have a 70 watt MH over the tank...go figure

[yawny]

Cool, I just ordered a Coralife mini yesterday, will see how it mounts over that hole. Hopefully I won't have to cut too much into the hood. I'll probably join the crowd and get a little Aquaclear HOB too. That stock filter is pretty useless especially without the nitrate biowheel...I took it out when nitrates were getting up to around 10 ppm.

 

I already have a 37gal display tank, and bought the Eclipse as a QT, but then ended up going with a cheapo 10 gal tank for QT and am using the Eclipse as a nano just for fun. I will say: my coralline is way better in the nano than in my display...more colors, variety and coverage--even with the crappy little 0 watt bulb!

[omens-nano07]

I have 192 watts(pc lighting) on my 30g long.

I dont think I can get clams or sps but I can get a lot of good stuff.