Can you have too many watts per gallon?
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- GermanShepherdGirl
- Copepod
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Can you have too many watts per gallon?
A friend of mine recently got a 29 gallon. He is going to use metal halide lighting and maybe a florescent. He wants to know if 10 watts per gallon is too much light? I told him I wasn't sure. What do you think?
-Kristyn
- GermanShepherdGirl
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Heat could be controlled pretty easily i would mostly be worried about corals bleaching out. If you can get the light higher than normal above the tank would help. My friend has a 250WMH over a 30L and it seems to be hard to find places for some coral due to the rediculous amount of light. I would suggest VHO that way you don't really have to worry about bleaching neer as much and the heat will be much less.
- Scott
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If the corals are acclimated to the light properly they shouldn't bleach unless they are low light corals. I had several different species only inches below the suface right under a 400w 6.5k Iwasaki and never had a coral bleach from too much light and at the time you couldn't get any more intense or have any more par than that without going to 1000w.
I keep mostly SPS so my experiences are mainly with them but I have had a green Sinularia on the sandbed under those lights and it grew like mad.
I keep mostly SPS so my experiences are mainly with them but I have had a green Sinularia on the sandbed under those lights and it grew like mad.
Wanted: to set up a tank again.
- Amphiprion
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I wouldn't personally recommend putting very high intensity lights on a smaller tank. It is certainly true with practically all corals (even typically low light ones) can and will do very well under very high intensities, but in smaller tanks there are several pitfalls. The first, heat, is certainly a problem. If the tank's temp rises above ~84 degrees, then you will have to find something to compensate for this. Lastly is the light acclimation process. In such a small and relatively shallow tank, you are going to have great difficulty acclimating many corals safely (whereas in larger tanks, you place them on the bottom). You will even notice extensive "burning" and bleaching when using the screen method in such shallow tanks (unless you placed many layers on top). My advice, if you do go this route, would be to put it on a cable/pulley system to raise the lights' distance from the water to acclimate them. This would also imply an open topped tank, which would help with some heat dissipation.
Andrew
25g planted nature aquarium
25g planted nature aquarium
- Scott
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I kind of agree. It you have a shallow tank (15 inches tall or less) I would go with a 150w (the 50k Iwasaki was getting great reviews last time I looked at them) or even a 70w. If you have a moderately tall tank (16 t 24 inches) like a 15 tall or a 29 gallon I would go with a 175w on the 15 and a 175w or 250w on the 29. My take on this is from a SPS perspective. If you want a softy or LPS tank you could just use a 70w or 150w on anything.Amphiprion wrote:I wouldn't personally recommend putting very high intensity lights on a smaller tank.
Heat may ne a problem with any tank. Though I have a hard time believing it I have read several times that 400 watt of light will produce the same amount of heat regardless of the type of bulb(s) being used. Oddly enough I alse read that the 1000w bulbs have the same surface temp as a 400w. It has been several years since I read those articals but they seem to contradict each other.
So, the real question is what does your friend want to keep in his 29 gallon reef?
Wanted: to set up a tank again.
- GermanShepherdGirl
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