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110W for 20 gal?


aurther_dent2001

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aurther_dent2001

Whats enough of light for a 20 gal (24"Lx20"Hx12"W) aquarium? Will 110W power compact be enough? Or 165W?

And more importantly what kind of reef system can I have with those lights?

 

And is 1W of MH equal to 1W of PC? (1W of incandecent is muchhhh less then 1W of PC, whats the relation between MH and PC).

 

Any references to some rule of thumbs on deciding what kind of invertebrates/corals require what kind of lights.

 

Some suggestions for online references (other then this site ofcourse) that I should look up before setting up the tank. I want to do this right the first time.

 

Thats seems like enough questions for now :). Thanks for the replies.

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Blind Tree Frog

I was told earlier today that you want 10watts per gallon (6.5 if doing soft coral). I'm not sure how that is adjusted for water depth thoguh.

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watts per gallon isnt a very good measure of how much light you need.

 

MH is more intense than a PC. think about it. the MH is giving all of its light in one small point, the PC is putting it off along a big tube.

 

depth is the most important thing to consider. on deep tanks, MH is the only light that will reach down to the bottom. on shallow tanks, PC is adequete

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I have a 20 as well and I have 130W which equal to 6.5W per gallon. I think that's good enough for mine. I have very hardy corals and try to stick to those since I dont want to risk having dead corals.

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Blind Tree Frog
Originally posted by tinyreef

interesting.  i wonder when did that old rule of thumb change from 5W/gal. to 10W/gal.?  and where did that 6.5W come from?  the hobby evolves, i guess.  :)

 

a very good basic lighting info site is californiareefs.com.

6.5 might of just come from the 5 and the 5 could just be for soft coral and the 10 for hard. But I'm just making up stuff at this point.
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btf,

i was just curious. the old 'rule' of thumb (as i heard it) was 5W/gal. was considered 'high' (stonys), 3W/gal. was considered 'medium' (softies), and anything under was relegated to FO or non-photosynthetics.

 

obivously, i don't agree with that old 'rule' and it skipped and assumed a whole lotta things. one important aspect that was often glossed over was the lack of differentiation of output (NO, HO, VHO) when counting watts.

 

it's just interesting to see how the hobby changes and adjusts. ;)

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PC's are fine for 20 gallon high. mine had 120 watts of PC and it grew all kinds of soft corals, but i'd be leary of trying any SPS other than montiporas.

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Blind Tree Frog

Tinyreef, gotcha. I found something earlier that I seem to remember said it should be 50~100Watts per square foot but that seemed oddly arbitrary.

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we should post a poll and then use the average of the results to declare an NR rule of thumb for lighting. :D

 

i've seen foot candles, micro-einsteins, lumens/sq. meter, etc. used. the fancy-schmancy ones actually sound good but how are regular people suppose to measure that? ???

 

hence, these rules of thumb. they're easy enough to describe/use, i just think they need more clarification when they are used. 3.14W/gal. for me. :P

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Blind Tree Frog

http://www.marineandreef.com/Info/lighting...chart_hood.html

 

These guys seem to like your rule of thumb

 

 

EDIT:

 

This guy seems to be saying that you cna't go wrong with more light and everything is doing much better when he went from 3watts per gallon up to around 12watts

http://home1.gte.net/rhe1/nanoreef/

http://www.reefs.org/library/talklog/c_dev...ito_040598.html (same guy)

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Originally posted by Blind Tree Frog

This guy seems to be saying that you cna't go wrong with more light

i'd tend to agree with him on that.

 

but there are many other issues to consider besides simply increasing lumens so that shouldn't be viewed as a magic bullet imo. livestock needs, spectrum, acclimation, water transparency, rippling, temperature, etc. and those are just the direct lighting side issues.

 

but i figure if lunchbucket can pop 400W MH over his 20g, then mo' light is mo' better (as a rough rule of thumb).

 

i don't figure anyone's about to top that unless they fork over a 1000W MH fixture over their 7g bow. but the glass will probably melt then. :P maybe even the LR. :D

 

*this thread has been hijacked, if everybody stays calm nobody will git hurt!*

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lol, 400 watts over a 20 gallon might not be "too much light" (although i'd tend to say that it is, indeed, too much light), but it's also a complete waste of money. for a tank no deeper than a 20 gallon, a 250 watt MH would penetrate to the bottom with absolutely no problems. hell a 175 would probably be sufficient.

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Rules of thumb simply never work. Like the good old freshwater rule 1 inch of fish/gallon. It works fine as a general rule, but when you look at a discus and a tetra you can see that if both were the same length the discus would easily be a much much larger fish because of it's body type. I'ce heard 10 wpg of NO flourescent which can be divided by 4 for PC lighting blah blah I've hear them all. If you want to do softies PC's are fine. Strong PC's are fine if you're doing SPS in a very shallow tank or high up in your tank. If you want to do SPS or clams at the bottom of a deep tank you need Halides. You have to think about what you want to do and the money you have to spend and go from there. The Dual Coralife PC fixture was enough light for me so that's what I got. I still wish I had halides though just so I could have halides because they're awesome, but I didn't have the money...

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Blind Tree Frog

I figured all wattages weren't created equal, but i never found anywhere that said how many watts of PC equaled how many watts of NO equaled....

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