lighting question

[fischcrazy]

I have a 55 gal tank witha pc that has 3 65w 50/50 bulbs and 3 actinic o3. do the actinics count when i am finding the watts per gallon?

 

[boomsticks]

Watts per gallon don't really mean anything. It is the quality of the light that really matters. Also you want something between 10000K-20000K to keep BTA. May I suggest a metal halide?

 

[dantodd]

Are the actinic also 65w bulbs?

Out of curiousity (not important to the question at hand) what are you using to drive them?

As boomsticks said there is really a lot more to lighting than watt/gal.

What are you trying to keep and how deep is your 55 (20"?)

 

[fischcrazy]

its 24" deeep. I have some Lps, softies, a sebae and bta.

 

[dantodd]

I saw your pic of the sebae in the other thread, looks pretty healthy but it could be a little darker. If it were me I'd probably swap out the actinics for 10K bulbs just because they do have higher PAR. Assuming of course that the actinic are also 65w PC bulbs. The 25% actinic is plenty, your tank won't have the blue that do now but it will give your anemone more light to work with.

24" is pretty deep for PC to penetrate so of course MH is better but it's hard to argue with success. I am running 2X 250W iwasaki (6500K) but if I had to do it again I'd pay the little bit extra for MH. I also run 220W of VHO actinic for supplementation. My 72 is 22" deep.