Lighting needs for our tank

[abigdog1976]

Question for our fellow reefers:

In a tank with a couple of bonsai, handful of acros, handful of c. clams, several monti's, several softies, many echinos, is 400 watt 20k XMs enough? Or is the additional vho 140w x2 (actinic and white) needed?

Would 14 x 39 watt lamps T5HO with 8 lamps of D&D actinic plus, 4 lamps of GE 6500K daylight lamps and 2 lamps of D&D Aquablue lamps be enough for this tank? I have been talking to GrimReefer and he has given me great advise but wanted to see if anyone had thoughts

The tank is a 175 gallon tank. The tank is 26" deep from the water level to the sand bed. The tank 17.25" wide from front to back and it is 72" wide.

 

[VCoo71]

just look at what Iwan has done with his 211 ga tank lit with only T-5's

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=813873&perpage=25&pagenumber=1

charlie

 

[abigdog1976]

What about the is this enough light part? or should we use vhos

 

[VCoo71]

from all i have seen and read on T5's with the right bulb,ballast, and reflector combination there pretty much outperforming halides on a watt per lumen ratio(where grim said he got a lumen of 120 something with 500 or so watts of T5's compared to a lower lumen with 750 watts of halides)....all you loose is the shimmer lines halides give you.....

charlie

 

[pwhitby]

Charlie, thats right.

Over the next few weeks I will be running a bunch of tests with MH and T5s using the new lightmeter we just acquired.

I will also run tests with natural sunlight at various depths in my pool to get a feel for what the real situation would be.

I will say this tho.
Under sunlight outside, sunny day at noon....the meter reads 2,000

a 400W MH 20K XM 5 inches away from the bulb is around 300.

a huge difference isnt it.

As I get results I will post them in a new thread.

Paul.

 

[abigdog1976]

well we just ordered the t5 aquatinics 72 inch system so paul if you want to try ours thats fine. We should get our in 2 weeks from what they said

 

[VCoo71]

do you know what ballast they are using it that fixture?

charlie

 

[abigdog1976]

its not the icecap so it wont overdrive the lamps but they use the workhorse ballasts