hmmm....
 

Is actinic lighting just for effect or is it useful with photosynthesis? I have one actinic (96w) and one 10000k daylight bulb (96W) and was wondering if the entire 192W is useful and can be counted when figuring out the watts per gallon for coral keeping and such... Hope this makes sense...

yes and no.. hows that for a answer :mrgreen:

Seriously though actinic light VHO of the same intensity as say a 10000K VHO would actualy be more usefull than the 10000K, the problem is the actinic light (in the same type of bulb) is usaly less intence than a Day light bulb.

Having said that deep water corals have adapted to be able to more efficiently use the lower nm light spectrums (ie actinic and blue light) so in some cases it is just as good.

now weather you can count the wattage to figure out how much light you have I will have to say no.. you can't count the wattage of any type of light to say how much light you have going into your tank. the reason I say this is wattage is only a measure of how much power the bulb consumes not a measure of how much light it produces, so you would be better off using intensity or PAR as a measure of your light. The problem with this is light meters can get expensive and not many stores will allow you to measure a bulb befor you buy it.

now having said all that I will through one more twist at ya.. instead of saying watts/gal which can be totaly messed up by how deep a tank is, how about saying watts/square foot of tank surface. this will more indacate a measurment of how much your light is spread to cover your tank. still not a accurate measurment but it is a lot better than watts/gal.

Steve

So whats your watts per square foot ?

And why do you only use this for water surface area ?


Wendell

You had to go and confuse me didn't ya Steve. : ) Ok, maybe you could make this simple for me. The light sytem I am talking about is the coralife 36" 192W PC strip. My tank dimensions are 36" x 16" x 20" (i think... the 16" is only in the middle...on account of being a bowfront). What I am really interested in is whether or not I have enough intensity to keep anything more than shrooms and softies... Is this enough info to give me a rough answer or is there more that needs to be considered...

well take a 40 gal tank and a 40 gal breeder tank for example

a regular 30 gal is 36" long and 12" wide giving you 3 square feet of surface area (or if you prefer bottom area)

a breeder 30 gal is 36" long and 18" wide giving you 4.5 square feet of surface area

a 30 gal X-high is 24" long and 12" wide giving you a surface area of 2 square feet.

so as you can see the same light on each of these tanks could have a much different high requirment to spread it out evenly over the tank. also the different hight on these tanks is going to give you a very different intensity reading at the bottom of the tank. so while we have all these differences the watt/gal is identical on each of these tanks.

Steve

do you have a sand bed? and how far are the lights off the water?
I had two 96 watt PC's on my tank and I did keep some low light SPS like digitata. and some LPS like a Brain and torch ect.

I will say that when I added a MH to the tank there color got more intense.

but ya you have enuf to go, and laiter you could add a MH if you decide you want to keep more light demanding corals.

Steve

Steve

Whats your watts per square foot ?

hmm, if I add it all togeather it is 115 watts/square foot.
83.3 watts of MH/square foot
and 31.6 wattrs of VHO actinic / square foot.

Steve

I'm still in the R&D stages right now, but I hope to have everything ready to go within the next few weeks. I plan on a 3 - 4 inch DSB (~80 pds of sand). My lights are elevated about 2 inches from the top of the aquarium so they will probably be about 3" above water level once it's filled. Is there truth behind the glass cover theory? I've heard that the glass reduces the intensity... I guess it would seing how glass absorbs UV rays. I have a kitten who I know will want at those fishies... (girlfriends....always making guys get cats!!! :rolleyes:)

As of yesterday, I'm at 147. :) Hopefully my acros will brighten up and stop dying now with my new VHO Super Actinic bulb and increased water flow.

31.7 w VHO actinic / sq ft
32.0 w PC 50/50 / sq ft
83.3 w MH / sq ft

yup thats why I don't go for this way of comparason either, but it is better than /gal

the problem with comparing with surface area is that it tells you nothing about actual intensity at a given point in the tank.

for instance I could put 400 watt ushio MH bulbs on normal ballasts on my tank and bump my total up to 165 watt/square foot but I would actualy have less light at any given point in my tank as the PAR output is lower on the 400 watt ushio than I obtain on my 250 watt HQI (this is not speculation but actual measured values.)

so you can see why it is hard to go by any measurment that uses watts.

Steve

oh Sam, how is that purple digitata doing? :neutral:

Steve

Steve am I correct to assume that I have 48 W / sq. ft. based on my demensions given earlier and pc wattage?

some whare between that and 60 because of the bow.

Steve

Doing better than a few days ago. I was moving it around too much. I change things in my tank weekly. It was getting nice purple tips and then after I moved it, the polyps retracted and the coral turned quite white. The polyps are coming back out now but its brown. I expect it to turn purple again once it has stabilized in its new location.
:)

Ryan just to confuse you some more, you were looking at my tank while I was gone, I have a total of 570 watts over that main tank. With a 57 watts sq/ft. But as you know most of my corals are in the top 6" of the water, directly under the MH lights. :eek:

Lee

Anemones do better with actinic supplementation. IMO and according to Joyce Wilkerson. :mrgreen:

Here are 2 pics with all 3 lights on. Pics taken under different camera shutter speeds to allow more exposure in 1 pic than the other.

You can see the MH in the center. Directly behind it at the same height is the 50/50. Below that at the top of the tank is the VHO actinic. The clip-on fan is on the right.

http://www.hyperdream.com/~samw/reef...31_img_std.jpg

http://www.hyperdream.com/~samw/reef...30_img_std.jpg

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