Lighting Questions

R

Richer

AC Members
Aug 7, 2002
888
2
0
42
Edmonton, AB
What is a general guideline to lighting a tank? I know in planted aquaria, 2 watts/gallon of normal flourescent lighting is considered the baseline for a high-light/high-tech plant tank. Whats the baseline for certain corals? I know that more is better, but it'd be nice to have some sort of general guideline to follow... I will most likely be using CF lighting considering my tank is small will that affect anything?

Thanks!
-Richer
 
As in planted tanks, watts/gal is of limited utility, and smaller tanks require higher ratios, but it's a start. Although some mushrooms can get by on less, 3 wpg is about minimum for soft corals and some stonies. More wattage will give you better growth and allow you to keep more species.

Have you decided which corals you want to go with?

Compact fluorescent is good. I think T5s are really starting to take over, because you get more PAR per watt. I am still trying to find out more about them, though.
 
Last edited:
I was looking through my LFS, they got frags of just about any thing you can think of. I was thinking maybe mushrooms, or zoos, or polyps.

-Richer
 
Excellent. I did some thinking, and I decided that a 15 gallon nano is just not going to be enough room for what I want.... plus I saw this neat little jawfish at my LFS. One look and I knew I want something like that in my tank, and after some research, that feeling just grew.
So what I'm gonna do is instead of a nano, I'm going to do a 30 gallon tank, have 192watts of PC lighting over it, with an attached AC500 refugium with a 55 watt light over that. Later down the road as the tank matures, I'll probably add an AquaC Remora skimmer to the whole setup. Not too much in a hurry for a skimmer, since the bioload will be pretty light. After the skimmer, I'll start with the mushrooms, zoos, ployps, etc.

Thanks for the help!
-Richer
 
Oooh, sounds fun!

Get a good lid. A buddy here has a jawfish that can squeeze though some seemingly impossible cracks. It has a strong desire to be in the sump, for some reason. Better than the carpet, I guess.
 
so I've heard. I have a decent glass lid for this tank already, but it leaves small section of the back exposed. I'm probably gonna cover that up with an eggcrate+window screen thing.

-Richer
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom