lighting

[vt]

I am kind of a newbie. I was just wondering if I have too much light. I am running a five gallon nano with 4-20W pcs. True I am doing a lot of tank scrubbing, but I feel it is another routine kinda like brushing my teeth. So is 80 W too much for a five gallon nano?

 

[Anonymous]

First off - you'll get answers that very depending on ppl's preference.

I don't think the light will burn/kill anything ... but heat might be a problem. Temps ok in your tank?

Personally, I would not put that much over a 5g nano ... there exists a threshhold where no more PC lighting will help you, and it's time to get a MH light. It's my opinion that 80w over a 5.5g is well beyond what's necessary

To reduce scrubbing, reduce your photoperiod. I was running 12/12 and had lots of algae. Trimming it down to 10/14 really helped.

 

[Meloco14]

What kind of corals are you keeping? Like Hwarang said, 80 PC watts may be overkill. In general, more light will indeed speed up coral growth and increase coloration, but only to a point. After packing so many watts into a tank it doesn't change much, until you change the intensity, like switching to MH.

 

[vt]

This nano is mostly full of frags. I have a colt coral, pumping xenia, yellow button polyps, devil's fingers, and a large umbrella leather.

As for photoperiod, I have two 50/50 pc running for twelve hours a day, the other two 6500k pc running for six of those twelve hours that the other two bulbs are running.

When all four bulbs are running the temp is 80F.

 

[Anonymous]

try backing the photoperiod back to 11/13 or 10/14 ... ?

edit: simply to reduce your scrubbing time ... i did this with mien and in fact i notice no difference since i just set the timer to come on 2 hours later and go off at the same time ...

 

[Juck]

Who manufactures a 20w pc bulb? Just curious, not come across that wattage before.

 

[vt]

Hi Juck:

Actually I lied in my previous posts. I am running 4 - 20w mini compacts, made by Coralife. I guess they are pc's, although the 50/50's are half 10000k daylight and half Actinic 3 blue.