What is low, medium, and high lighting?

[jgcurt]

I am interested in keeping some corals. When you buy a coral they either require low, medium, or high lighting. Could anyone tell me how many watts per gallon would be low, medium, and high lighting. I would like to know this so I can work on my lighting to get it where it needs to be. Thanks!

 

[03]

well i think 5 watts per gallon would be good also i think when you talk about lighting low med or high,you achive that buy placeing the coral in different levels of the tank ,to make it simple generally the deeper you go the darker it gets

 

[richard rendos]

I think lighting should be measured in spectrum and intensity, not watts per gallon. I would say that Normal Output flourescent lights would be low lighting, power compacts and VHO (very high output) would be medium lighting, and MH would be high.

 

[jgcurt]

Thanks so much for the info

 

[mr. angelfish]

I think it is time for sciencist to determine the lumen per gallon rule and classify the certain "plants" lumen in order to thrive.
Be nice if we have caterogy for such "plants" inhabiants' that thrives in Low, Medium, and High with lumen specification in this caterogy. We need a book that would explain like below.
Example:
Picture of the inhabiant
Type of whatever.....
feeding
saltnity
PH
etc...
Light level: Light (3,000-5,000 lumen) Prefer more 10000K/along with blue supplement. or whatever to specific.
or
Light level: High (40000-50000 lumen) Prefer 60% blue/40% 10000K. or whatever to specific.
Paragraph of their wild backgrounds, caring background, feedings, etc..... You know....
End
Something like that. That would be very neat and very handy! A must to keep-item. Any book that have such light specifications like that?
As many of websites, etc have specific just Low, Med, and High caterogy per inhabiant. My question is how much is consider as low, med, high? To me those answer isn't good enough.
Reason I do not like watt per gallon (WPG) is because it aint accurate as there is so much debate over that WPG.
Example:
Live rock require light-med light. (FOWLRLS configuration) (If opt for reef configuration, no need to worry about Low-Med light for LR and go for whatever "plants" would thrive with either HO, VHO, PC, and MH)
Get to that point..... One 55 watts PC 10000K would create around 4000i-ish lumen per two foot long. While regular 4 foot, 32-40 watts, 10000K tube would create around 2500-3000-ish lumen. VHO 4 foot 10000K VHO would create around 1000 more lumen than regular tube. T-5 (lumen info unavailable but according to investigation that they claim it outperform over VHO and PC, more intensity.) by estimate if they are 5000-6000ish lumen. Suppose a regular 4 foot tube with 3000 lumen and does that mean lumen would be 1500 per two foot?
MH 175 watts 10000K would create around 8,000 lumen per two foot.
As we can easily accommondate for more tubes to increase lumen to satisfy the LR's need however how much is Low-Med lumen to be accurate measure per two foot area?
This example goes to such as SPS, Clam, Mushroom, and etc. I have seen some Clams being bleached out in few LFS due too high light intensity. Some even got "sunburned" due too much intensity or some even die off due to insufficient lumen. So back to the point, How accurate can we provide satisfaction lighting to their needs WITHOUT bleach 'em out or whatever pro/con effect can effect on them.
Sorry so long thread.