Sufficiant lighting or no?

[coon]

i have a 260 W power compact light.
It is outter orbit brand.

2x 65 watt dual 6700/10k bulbs.
2x acintic bulbs.

It is a 55gal tank.
and i believe the depth of it is around 24"

is this suitable lighting for any coral?
and would the coral have to be at the top of the tank since these do not penetrate like MH?

 

[Herefishyfishy]

No SPS (small polyp stony coral)
LPS (large polyp stony) if very near the light
Less demanding softys.

I am not fond of PCs, but at least you have 260 watts of it on a smaller tank,

 

[Steven Pro]

There is an inherent problem when making generalities, in particular with lighting. For instances, many plating and digitate Montipora species would be fine in this size tank with this lighting as would Turbinaria reneformis and Pocillopora damicornis, all so-called SPS corals.

You have to first figure out what you want to keep and then get lighting that is best for them.

 

[coon]

well i was wanting to get a branching anchor coral.
not sure the scientific name its like euphanilla or something.

also i would like to have some zooanthids and possibly a some sort of hairy mushroom.

From what i had read in the past i believe i have good enough lights for those.

I am about to get a aqua c remora skimmer to help keep things clean for the coral.
Currently i have 2 false clowns, 1 lawnmower blenny. 1 dwarf annelid, 8-10 dwarf hermit crabs and 5-8 varying types of snails.
The snails are cerith, astrea, and one other i forget the name of.

 

[jezzeaepi]

PC's will keep those corals alive. Keep in mind though that they will not grow much at all under them. PC's are just not very effecient at getting the light they produce to the corals. 70% of their light is sent off in a direction other then your tank.

I was using a 192 pc hood on my 40 gallon for 8 months. 1 month ago I upgraded to a t5 hood with individual parabolic refelectors(the individual refelctors being the key) and all of my corals have colored up fantasticly and grown more then they did in the previous 5 months. The t5 hood uses the same amount of electricity as the PC hood and puts less heat into my water.

 

[Steven Pro]

Given the two things you mentioned wanting to keep, I would not change your lighting.

 

[bobt2]

i have a 55 with 260w/pc and the remora skimmer. all softys do fine. mushrooms and zoas are spreading

 

[Anthony Calfo]

though I hate rules of thumb, you can faiorly saythat you need a minimum of 5 watts per gallon of daylight (forget actinic) just to get in the ballpark for typicak garden reef species. If you want colorful shallow water sps corals... you need to double that amount of light.

I'd suggest two 150 watt 10k K halides for this tank to make it short and sweet.

 

[coon]

Doh, corals do not use acintic light?
I was under the impression that 450nm was the optimal wavelength.

I can take out the acintic bulbs and add some more daylight ones.
would that allow LPS and less light intensive ones thrive?
Mainly i was wanting to keep hairy mushrooms, anchor corals and Zoa's

 

[Anthony Calfo]

its helpful but not principal for zooxanthellate corals... with special regard for the way it is so badly abused to excess by aquarists. Furthermore... fluorescent lights of any kind need to be no more than 3" off the surface of the water to be effective (many folks have their lights too high as well). Only halides get mounted high.

 

[reefkoi]

PC's will keep those corals alive. Keep in mind though that they will not grow much at all under them.



.

I dont agree with this really, I kept lots of LPS softies in a 180 under pc's for over 10 years. I had euphillia, hammers and frogspawn corals, a colt coral that grew from a couple inches to over 24", very large elegance coral. Even grew squamosa and deras clams to almost 10" long.

I dont run PC's anymore but I think they have their place, especially when you dont have or dont want to run a chiller.

here are 2 pics, a before and after of the 180 with pc's showing coral growth
all corals were bought as your average small 4-6" specimins

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[onehawksfan]

Not to hijack the thread, but I am wondering about actinic lights for coral growth. There is a nearby fish store (I won't name names) that claims T-5 bulbs have "amino acids" or help create "amino acids" that help corals grow that no other type of light (MH, CF) can produce. It sounded a little b.s. to me, what do you know Anthony?

 

[morgan]

at the end of the day coral are very adaptive to lighting conditions although i love my mh light but my 4 average fluro bubls 2 10,000 and 2 antinics grow an awsume soft coral reef anthony has seen one of the corals out of there and its healthy and spreading fast i have though of adding lps but its best not to mix them in a tank so highly populated with softys i even have two bta's in there and one i split with a screw drive in to and it re grew one went in a stupid mj. but it healed it self and is still growning
i would say keep ur lighting set up it will be enough to keep all that stuff happy esspecially the discs as im finding new babys every week, if u want to keep more stonys and stuff get a 400watt mh 14,000 bulbs are a nice colour unless u want insane blue that would do ur tank it dose my 50gl lps dominated tank

 

[chris&barb]

There is a nearby fish store (I won't name names) that claims T-5 bulbs have "amino acids" or help create "amino acids" that help corals grow that no other type of light (MH, CF) can produce.

i needed a good laugh:badgrin:

the bulbs we use create light, light energy, photons. no amino acids from the bulbs. take a look at a 24"PC bulb and at a 48" T-5 bulb, they both have the same wattage, diameter and pin spacing. but one is exactly twice as long. the magic of T-5's is the reflector. there stretched out PC's with a wrap around reflector.

 

[sihaya]

LOL Lights making amino acids, wow... that's some light! It's not even that they make or fold proteins, they actually make the very amino acids... some of which take our bodies dozens of complex biochemical reactions with multiple enzymes to make (and that's the ones we even CAN make). How come western medicine doesn't know that T5 lights can do it just that easy? lol

 

[onehawksfan]

Thanks for your replies! I was a little skeptical about the amino acids claim, but I don't know much about that kind of stuff. Anybody from Reef Frontiers have a comment about this?

 

[Anthony Calfo]

I gotta agree with the diasagreement of Reefkoi ... though the statement must be qualified.

Quality PCs can grow corals very well... I've had some of my best growth in corals under PCs. Their principal limitation is penetration of water at depth.

For deeper tanks.... they wane in utility. For shallow tanks (say... less than 18"... especially top 12" of water surface) they are quite fine. Do pay attention to product reviews, lamp color/CRI/PAR etc to shop for a better bulb.