Metal Halide Lighting
- Thread starter ncstang
- Start date
I guess it can be good, but I think its overkill. It would be like chasing a horse and buggy with a ferrari.
im guessing it would probably be around 10,000k, where as freshwater bulbs are around 6700k, so the sprectrum might be off. Ill let somebody chime in who knows more than I do. You could always give the metal hallide to me. Haha, or sell them for freshwater lights.
Ive seen tank under metal Hilides that look very good, so it obviously can be done. They should be placed higher above the tank though then you would with regular lighting as MH produce a lot of heat.
you are correct abou the heat my lights sit in my custom canopy about 12 inches above the aquarium. I have 490 watts of light on a 56 gallon column tank. One 250, one 175, and a 65 watt pc, all of which are 10000k, i already understand the kelvin temps and all. The tank was a recent sps reef wich i broke down do to technical details. Im going to set up a live plant tank with a pressure co2 injection. I just was curious all i really read about is pc lighting.
metal halides are great for a planted tank, they provide more wattage than CF but they also generate more heat and are pricey. That's why you see most people stick with traditional hood lighting.
ncstang said:
I really don't think you need 490 watts of lighting for a 56, that's overkill imo. At most you need 4 watts per gallon. Anything can be grown with that kind of light. With 490 watts, your sitting at around 8.75 watts per gallon. If i were you, id go with a single 250 watts MH, which will give you 4.5 watts per gallon. More then enough for just about anything.
Another reason not to go to high is, algae can become difficult to control at that kind of lighting. Now ive heard of people doing it, but it really takes a lot of care to keep algae in control with that kind of light.
Just my two cents!
You can use MH lights with great success, usually it is the bigger tanks with a lot of depth that require MH lights b/c the light they produce can penetrate the water quite deep. As for how much light you have is completely up to you, 490w of light will still not compare to natural sunlight and some people use natural sunlight for their planted tanks. But as someone has stated ealier if you do not get a good balance of Co2, nutrients and light you may have a lot of problems with algae. My advise is that you start out with the lower wattage light and if you want very fast growing plants gradualy add all of the extra light after you have everything sorted out. I would say go with a 5500k to 6500k if you want the best results for growing plants, but 10,000k will still be ok. Watts per Gallon can be misleading some times, eg, my tank has 1500w of light on a 400g with the lights about 5" away from the surface which makes it about 4w/gallon, now this could be considered a lot of light for a tank this size, but in a little 5g 4w/gallon could be considered low, so you have to take the tank size into consideration.
