Lighting?

[rmoore89]

Can you ever have "too much" lighting or wattage per gallon ? I switched from a 30g to a small 20g and now I have almost 8watts per gallon. I have 156w pumping into the tank. Only let the daytime lights run for 4 hours and actinics for 5 because I ran them for 10 and got what looked like to be the start of algae blooms all over again ><. I was just curious if there was ever too much lighting for a tank. My leather coral opened up for 2 days, and now doesn't seem to want to open all the way, and my zoas seem to be trying to come back to life after that huge green 30g problem >.>, just curious, thanks everybody ^^v.

 

[wangotango]

Watts per gallon is irrelevant since a watt is not a unit of light. Sounds like you have four 39w T5? If so that's fine for that size tank.
I would either stick with the reduced photoperiod and slowly add time to it over a few weeks, or put some layers of screen on top of the tank and remove a layer after a few days to give the corals time to adjust.

 

[rmoore89]

Thank you Wango. I'll slowly add hours to get back to the 10hour actinic period. I just didn't wanna have a pure green tank like what happened to my 30g =[.