i've read a thread somewhere about the watts per gallon rule breaking down in larger tanks because light intensity decays with distance [tall tanks vs short tanks]. makes complete sense, but I guess my question is, how do you calculate the proper lighting. I have a 100 gallon tank that is 60 inches long x 24 inches wide x 17 inches tall. I currently have (4) 65 watt power compacts with phillips filaments inside [better output i believe]. any help would be appreciative.
lighting for 100 gallon wide
- Thread starter sardesign
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The 260 watts of lighting that you have should be sufficient for a wide variety of plants in a 17" tall tank. What spectrum are the lamps? Personally, I've had the best results with 6700K lamps, but between 5600k and 8000k will work.
Mark
Mark
most people will say on larger tanks like 100+ gal if your having trouble growing something at 3wpg look for something your lacking other then light.
with 2.6wpg on a 100 gal tank you should also be adding co2 and most likely ferts.
with 2.6wpg on a 100 gal tank you should also be adding co2 and most likely ferts.
I agree... i do add CO2 and ferts. Just curious about lighting as I didn't want to start adding in more transformers and wiring [running out of room]
I run 6700K + 10000K sunpaq CFs. They seem to work rather well. I had 5500K at one point and they didn't seem to help grow plants... but something else could be lacking. To be honest I think light is light and as long as there are the lumens, plants will absorb it.
yes you could add more but i see no reason why you should.
light isnt just light its a little harder then that. there so much talk on light that it can make your head spin.
light isnt just light its a little harder then that. there so much talk on light that it can make your head spin.