lighting for a 10g nano
 

I am looking at a 96w coralight for my 10g nano. Any comments, or suggestions?

I am running the 96w coralife aqualight on my 10 gal. Looks quite nice. But I would spend a little extra money and put a 70w retro halide with some supplemental actinics on it next time.
Otherwise I like my light as is.

I'm also running the Coralife 96W. I'm very happy with it, but a lot of the livestock wasn't too keen on the adjustment from 40w to 96w... Things took some time to adjust, and we had to move some stuff down to make it happy.

It is adding a bit more heat to the system, so we put it up on legs and may still have to add supplemental fan support. I'm also looking for some time to add moonlights to the system - I wish they were built-in.

Matthew

Wow, you guys :eek: 96w on a 10g? That's 10w per gal. Pardon my saying so, but isn't that overkill? What do you want to grow in such a relatively shallow tank that requires so much light? Would like to see pics of tanks with this kind of lighting, though :biggrin:

take a look at this tank. He is from Calgary too.

http://nano-reef.com/forums/showthre...ighlight=cyclo

I dont really believe in this watts per gallon method of lighting.
If you had a 1gal tank with a 10w bulb over it, thats also 10w/gal but probably not enough to grow much.
I am running a 150w HQI MH over my 25gal cube. When I bought the light I every one on Nano-reef told me I didnt have enough light. But 150w over a 25 is 6w/gal, which I have read on many information sites online is in the upper end of the watts/gal ratio. I am very happy with the 150w over my 25, any more would be too much.
I am only new to this game so I may be way off base. But it seems everyone one with beautiful nano tanks are using alot more light than what would normally be needed.
Opinions?

outtafocus,

Thanks for the link. Very nice tank :cool: Doesn't look like too much light to me.

I've got a 175w MH on my 37g, 24" x 18" x 24" H. Growth of my monti caps is good under it.

I've got 4 x 95w VHOs on my mixed soft, lps, sps 67g, 36" x 18" x 24" H. Didn't think it was enough light for my catspaw frag, but growth under the VHOs is better than it was under my 175w MH. In both tanks, the catspaw was high up in the tank. Of course, the difference in catspaw growth in the two tanks may be that I'm now paying closer attention to alk, Ca and Mg levels.

With 2 20w PC screw-in bulbs (standard issue 50/50 bulbs common to 10g nanos) I had some very serious light seeking behaviour from my zoos and mushrooms. They just weren't bright enough. The 96W has settled them down, but some of the higher-up corals (a torch in particular) didn't like the intensity and got moved down a bit.

I'll post a shot of the tank here this weekend.

Matthew

Lighting a tank is a very strange thing, then. I've only got two 55w PCs and a 40w NO actinic on my 120g. Shrooms, button polyps, GSPs, xenia, macroalgae all do amazingly well in that tank:

http://www.lostmymarblz.com/120gal-may-05-4.jpg

That is an awesome tank beverly. I've read about putting 175w MH over 10g tanks. To me that is too much. Time will only tell. I'll post pics after I get the lights, on order from Paul's aquarium. I week away :sad:

Looking forward to your pics, Marty :biggrin:

I've been debating between sticking with PCs or getting a 70w/150w MH over my 15g fuge... keep us updated on your progress!

-Rich

We've got a 70 watt DED and 2 30 watt NO actinics and it does great. I would defiantly spend the money now on a halide because you are going to want one in a year anyway.

Are you referring to me? FYI, I've had these PCs since the beginning of time (though the bulb has changed). My fuge is doing perfectly fine on them... its a matter of whether or not I want to spend the money to make my setup look a little nicer.

-Rich

Rich,

Do you have pics?

Yes, can we see pics to back up that MH is better even in a smaller tank. I had PCs over a 75g and then went with 2x175w MH, didn't notice any difference in my tank. Granted, I only ran the halides for 2-3 months before I had to take the tank down. I've been looking for 70w bulbs but they seem hard to find and the color is yellow even in the higher K's.

I have a 70w halide over my 2gal and I don't think it is too much light. That is 35watts/gal but I think there is a point when the watts per gal ratio is irrelevant. For example, if 70 watts mh keeps my frogspawn is healthy under 5 inches of water in a 120gal tank, why would it suddenly need less light just because I put it in a smaller tank?? The thing to remember though is that in a nano, depth has no real affect on light, because the amount of light that hits the BOTTOM of my 2gal is the same amount that would be penetrating only the TOP 8 inches of a 120gal (directly below the bulb). I am not a power crazy par-nazi or anything like that, the only reason I went with mh is because I believe that corals need a threshhold amount of radiation to be healthy. Also, halide is a very compact option for lighting - any other type of bulb/fixture would have ended up being bigger than my whole tank :razz: .
Finally, because of its penetrating power, I am able to raise my mh a lot higer above the tank, which helps with temperature control. 70watts of metal halide keeps my tank cooler than the 13watts of pc that it replaced :eek: !

- Chad

I promised to post a photo of my 10g lighted by the coralife 96 quad...

http://www.canreef.com/photopost/dat...May_05-med.JPG

That doesn't look too bright to me. Can't wait to get mine.

No I was refering to the ten gallon a friend and I have set up.