Thinking of adding lights.

[pomme]

Thinking of adding lights.

I am thinking of adding some lights to my tank (eg t5s).

The tank is a 100 gal with sump, skimmer, ca reactor, kalk reactor, rowaphos reactor, 2 tunze 6000 streams and multicontroller. The lighting is a single 250 watt 14k hqi with 2 18watt actinics.

It has 100 kg if live rock and is dominated by 1 full sps colony and 6 small colonies and around 20 frags.

The water conditions are:
Temp - 27
Salininty - 1.025 or 35ppt.
Ph - 8
Am / Nitrite - 0
Nirtate - 0.1
dKH - 9
Calcium - 420
Mg - 1550
Strontium - 8
Phosphate - 0

The problem i am having is that some of the sps corals since going into the tank have gone brown, so i was thinking if i add some extra lighting to this would it help?







I was thinking of adding one of the Deltec double t5 units, http://www.deltecaquariumsolutions.com/lighting.php I was thinking of going for the aqua blue or the actinic plus with the midday 6000.

Or do you guys think a different combination would be better?

Would this help the corals from browning out by providing more light for them especially in the actinc part?

Andrew

[Junkzoo]

Hello Andrew,
If your 100g tank is of the "normal " retangular configuration, i would say one more 250's , if not two ,would help out a lot. Not a lighting expert here, plus i'm running 2-400W 10K MH's and 4 55W PC actinics on a 75 gallon tank, so i'm on the high end of Watts per gallon "rule" .
Maybe others here can chime in and help you out in more detail,,,
BTW: nice looking tank!

[Casey]

Andrew another 250 will help for sure but sps still may brown out on ya just wait it will come back it just takes time mine do it all the time and I have a 100 gal with 11 watts a gal on it.

[pomme]

yeah it is a weird shaped 100 gal as is 40" by 24" wide by 28" deep,

so my watts per gal are about 3 watts per gal?????? that sounds quite low,

but i dont have room for another 250 but adding 3 t5s will add
117 watts, so take it up toover 4 watts per gal?

this is what the tank looks like now:

[pomme]

i could add two 150 watt double ended halides from stm or 2 250 watters:

http://www.stm-shop.co.uk/acatalog/STM_Lighting_.html

with the bulbs being either 150 watt 10k, 150watt 14k, or 250 watt 20k.

http://www.stm-shop.co.uk/acatalog/M...ide_lamps.html

but i would most like to get de 150 watt 20k, but will look around a bit more for these?

[Cookie_Monster]

why not replace what you have with a 400 watt and beef up those actinics?

[pomme]

yeah by adding a 400 watter i will be adding 150 watt to the tank but the other way i will add 300 watt. thats is irrespectve of t5s.

but is a good idea which i hadnt thought about.

thanx, got me thinking now,
andrew

[Jimbo]

With a tank that deep metal halides seem the way to go, they penetrate deeper. I have one 400 watt over my 40g ~ You won't get the same type of penetration from the t5's. I'd add several 36" vho actinics to the combination also 4x96 watts will be 400 more watts and change out your 250 to a 400 watter, you can stagger the actinics with the halide on/off period if heat is an issue.

Bye the way your tank is awsome

[mapster]

28" deep, I would go with 400watts

[Bleeg]

hey,

I had an issue with corals turning brown on me for a bit. I then started dosing with buffer to raise the alk. It was 8-9 when i started it but at the end, I raised it to about 13. Corals now started turning back. In fact, some of my bali stuff started turning blue and teal. Since then, I stopped adding buffer and just bought another k2r calcium reactor. with 2, the alk is maintained at about 12. Seems to do the trick.. (granted, I already have over 1300 watts of lighting over my 120)

[pomme]

yeah my dkh is 9 so i might try and raise this then.

[pomme]

hiya guys,
update for you............

well i went and got two of the stm compact lights from jon forneman second hand, they have the blv 10k de 250 watt bulbs in there. the tank looks so much more brighter now , i am running the two new 250 for 1 hour each day and i will increase this by 30 mins every week, or would 5 mins a day be better?







i also got two tunze 6100 from preds (ollie) , so now i have 2x 6000 and two x 6100 on a multicontroller, they are in a bad place at the moment but i will be moving them around to different places in the future. but the amount of water movement is carzy, on the surface where the 3 tunzes meet the one tunzes flow there is like a small motionless wave on the surface its wierd ???? I have them all on 30% at the mo but will slowly increase this untill i get a level that i like

Andrew