10g Lighting

[jordan9095]

I ordered a 120w (55x3w) epistar led fixture with Royal blue 460mn and cold white 8000~10000K at a 1:1 ratio. the optics are 60 and 90. how high should i hang it from my tank and what kind of light cycle should i keep?

[jordan9095]

can anyone help me out a little? is it too much light?

[datpapi@yahoo.com]

whoa wait? You have 55 3w leds on a 10g tank?? That seems to be a bit much considering I'm looking into 36-43 3W leds for a 65g.

hopefully they are dimmable lights because you may damage your corals.

[jordan9095]

They're not dimmable but they are Chinese LEDs. I thought I could hang them a bit higher and still use them if I get a larger tank. It came down to being the same price for a lower wattage diy fixture so I decided to get the 120 that was already assembled

[jordan9095]

Anyone else have an opinion? Is it absolutely too much light? I don have any livestock right now. I got it because I want to be able to keep corals that have a high demand for light and I would like to use it if I get a larger tank

[daytonajim00]

I know they're listed as 3W but I wonder what thier lumineer output is. Lumens are a measure of the actual visible light. The efficiency of the device is what you pay for meaning its ratio of power consumption to light output.

[jordan9095]

There is some fine print saying that they are really rated at 2w or something like that. They're definitely not top of the line LEDs

[ray-the-pilot]

OK the only way to know what the light level is... is to measure it! While everyone says you need to measure the PAR level, for practical purposes you can use a PAR or LUX meter. I think you can grow anything at 2000 LUX or 40 PAR. (Anyone can chime in here if they think otherwise). If the light level is too intense, you can move the lights away until the intensity at the growing surface is right. In fact this is better than using a lower light intensity as the correct light level will be more uniform through the depth of the tank.

[jordan9095]

Thanks for the help ray. I don't have a lux meter or anything to measure the strength of light. I'll definitely look into that though*