Metal Halide: Worth it?
- Thread starter michaelb
- Start date
C
chadster
Guest
I have a 75 gallon system with a 20 gallon sump and my lighting consists of (2) Super Actinic "03" 110W bulbs, basically for the blue light and (2) Iwasaki 250W 6500K MH lamps. Both sets are on different timers. The actinics are used alone in the morning and evening as dawn and dusk and stay on the duration of the day. The MHs kick on for daylight about 8 hours. My whole system was purchased from a good friend and I firmly believe that the lighting I have is overkill for the tank. I have decreased the daylight hours from his setting of 10 hours, gradually down to 8 per day, and may come down a little more. Reasoning for this, is the information I have been reading on lighting which has led me to believe proper lighting consists of 4 to 5 watts per gallon. For a 75 gallon tank, this is approximately 300 total watts. The total for my tank at this time is 720 watts. My corals seem fine but I definitely have to pay attention to each and every one's location based on this. This holds very true when trying to introduce new corals. The way I understand it, hard corals can be the most vulnerable to high lighting, where as, SPS do much better under the same circumstances. Due to my inexperience, I have lost new corals because of my ignorance. Hope this helps a little. A good article on lighting is by Charles Delbeek at www2.hawaii.edu/~delbeek/delb1.html .
chuck
Member
I have used 2 72" VHO's on my 110 long, with a timer. Everything grows great and I don't have to worry about burning my creatures. My local fish shop uses only VHO's on all his reef tanks and he has some of the most impressive reef tanks I have ever seen. I have two URI bulbs, which I consider the best on the market and an Ice Cap Electroninc ballast. I have had no problems w/ anything. Good Luck.
