Ace25's 75G Build Thread
- Thread starter Ace25
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Ya, being in a club is awesome. There is always someone who has just the parts you need when an emergency comes up. This person had just upgraded from this tank to a 120G the week before I needed to borrow it, so timing was perfect. Even got a coralife 2x150w MH w/CF actinics and a Mag9.5 return pump. I used my own sump. Then I setup my old 29G as a frag tank and put 6x T5HO bulbs on it to give it enough lighting for my SPS corals. You can see the difference in brightness in the picture.
Yup, when your new tank starts doing this in the lower left corner of the tank, you kind of want to get it fixed before anything really bad happens. 
On the lighting, the fact I took out the actinics on the 29G and just went with 6 10K bulbs also makes it a lot brighter. Before tearing down my 75G cube I did the math on PAR and while I know it isn't a perfect measurement, I figured I got around 15.3 PAR per gallon on my 75G tank and I am getting 14.8 PAR per gallon on my 29G tank, so my SPS corals are under similar intensity of light. I know, that isn't the most scientific or accurate measurement for PAR, and PAR varies greatly depending on depth or distance to the side, but it was a good rough estimate. I just knew the 2 150w MHs on a 4' tank were not even going to come close to matching around 400w in a cube so I had to come up with something feasable to hold my SPS corals, and I already had the tank and lighting for the 29G, just had to buy a couple 10k bulbs.
What kind of reflector are you using again? It looked like a LumenBright from first glance. Also, a more effective measure of intensity would be to compare the PAR/surface area. Of course, this doesn't take depth into consideration, but tends to be more accurate in terms of intensity. In the 29, you have roughly 1.2 PPFD per square inch (yes, I am butchering units 
) vs. 1.6, which is significant--around 25% more light/amount of surface area. That doesn't even take into account the "hot spots" found under halides...
) vs. 1.6, which is significant--around 25% more light/amount of surface area. That doesn't even take into account the "hot spots" found under halides...
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