LIGHTING QUESTIONS??

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Beowulff83

Beowulff83

AC Members
Feb 5, 2007
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Wellington Oh,
Ok i was bored and trying to figure out this lighting thing. I read all about MH and other options but i was wondering why you can not use regular cfl for smaller tanks?

Most coral at a depth of 15ft get a lux of 20,000. And at 30ft get 10,000lux.
http://www.liveaquaria.com/PIC/article.cfm?aid=26
Now G.E. makes a daylight cfl bulb 6,500k, that is 26 watts and 1,600 lumens.
http://genet.gelighting.com/LightProducts/Dispatcher?REQUEST=CONSUMERSPECPAGE&PRODUCTCODE=89095&BreadCrumbValues=Lamps_Compact%20Fluorescent_Self-Ballasted&ModelSelectionFilter=
"The difference between the lux and the lumen is that the lux takes into account the area over which the luminous flux is spread. 1000 lumens, concentrated into an area of one square metre, lights up that square metre with an illuminance of 1000 lux. The same 1000 lumens, spread out over ten square metres, produces a dimmer illuminance of only 100 lux." Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux

Now since my tank is a 40 gal. 3ft long x 1ft wide x 1ft tall. Wouldnt Using 8 of the cfl's stated above be efficient enough for soft coral? 1,600 x 8 = 12,800 lumens.

Please slap and correct me where needed. I am new to the lighting thing so hopefully I am not too far off.
 
fsn77

fsn77

AC Moderators
Staff member
Feb 22, 2006
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SC
Depending on the soft corals in question, it certainly could be possible. While soft corals are categorized by many as not needing a whole lot of light, there are definitely soft corals that do need higher amounts of light.

The issue with compact fluorescent lighting tends to be efficiency. Because the bulbs are coiled around (or bent back on themselves in the case of PCs), not all of the light being produced by the bulb ends up going towards the tank. Even with a good reflector, many of which advertise 95% reflectivity, the percentage of light reaching the tank isn't necessarily as high as with other lighting types.

Some things to think about...
When the bulb you listed was tested, at what distance from the bulb was the output measured? Remember that the output was probably measured in air, not after the light traveled through any water.
While lux is an area based concentrated measure of lumens, lighting a fish tank with them would not be considered concentrating the output. Regardless of how much light is getting into the tank itself, there will be light loss though the front, back, and side glass. I'm curious if anyone has ever measured the amount of light from those style bulbs that reaches say 8" - 12" in a saltwater tank.

All that said, unless some form of actinic lighting is incorporated into this soft coral reef, the tank will have a rather yellow visual appearance using strictly 6,500K bulbs.

It could definitely be a good experiment to try, especially if it was done by taking soft coral frags from another tank and comparing the results obtained in the tank with this lighting to results seen in the tank the frags originated from.

[BTW, I use to live outside of Wellington, OH... The world gets smaller every day. :)]
 
Beowulff83

Beowulff83

AC Members
Feb 5, 2007
142
0
0
40
Wellington Oh,
Yeah this would be a great experiment . . . too bad my tank is only a month and a half old and i am a long ways away from even considering coral lol.

I used to live in huntington just south with my parent then i moved out and live north of town. yes it is a small world. we could be related lol.
 
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